MONOLITHIC INTEGRATION OF OPTOELECTRONIC SMART PIXELS

An AlGaAs/GaAs layer structure, grown in a single step, and a fabrication process has been developed for the monolithic integration of cascadable optoelectronic smart pixels. Metal semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs), light-emitting diodes(LEDs) and photodiodes (PDs) are used for the integration. As an example a threshold circuit consisting of a dual-photodiode input and a current balanced output containing an LED is presented. The circuit shows a switching energy of 2pJ and a minimum switching power of 3nW. The maximum light output of the LED is 30mW with a contrast ratio > 1000. The overall power dissipation is 15mW.