Researchers at the Intel Laboratory published a paper in the December 7 issue of the scientific journal Nature Photonics in which they claim the development of silicon-based photoelectric detectors. This device will significantly lower the costs in fiber optic communications along with much improved performance.

Intel states that its avalanche photodetector (APD) achieved a gain-bandwidth product of 340GHz, which is the highest performance among any other similar devices ever built.

"This is the first time a silicon photonics device has a better performance than a III-V device,” Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s photonics lab reported. He also said that the result shocked the entire research team, because the primary goal had been to achieve, “90% of the performance of [more] exotic materials” with a silicon device.

The Intel APD runs about 4 times faster (approximately 40Gbps) than high-end APD’s do now with a fraction of the cost. An APD is used to amplify the optical signal.

It creates a large amount of electrons for each photon that the device intakes. Silicon in the Intel’s device acts as an amplifier material, but a layer of germanium is also used to receive light in the infra-red spectrum. However, according to Paniccia, Intel aims to build the APD primarily from silicon to keep costs as low as possible.

The company’s project was also supported by two researchers from the University of Carolina at Santa Barbara, who had previously contributed to the development of APD devices. Intel also plans to implement the technology in other domains.