Simulation of near-infrared photodiode detectors based on β-FeSi2/4H-SiC heterojunction

In this paper, we propose the near-infrared p-type β-FeSi₂/n-type 4H-SiC heterojunction photodetector with semiconducting silicide (β-FeSi₂) as the active region for the first time. Optoelectronic characteristics of the photodetector are simulated using a commercial simulator at room temperature. The results show that the photodetector has a good rectifying character and a good response to the near-infrared light. Interface states should be minimized to obtain a lower reverse leakage current. The response spectrum of the β-FeSi₂/4H-SiC detector, which consists of a p-type β-FeSi₂ absorption layer with a doping concentration of 1×10¹⁵ cm^-3 and a thickness of 2.5 μm, has a peak of 755 mA/W at 1.42 μm. The illumination of the SiC side obtains a higher responsivity than that of the β-FeSi₂ side. The results illustrate that the β-FeSi₂/4H-SiC heterojunction can be used as a near-infrared photodetector compatible with near-infrared optically-activated SiC-based power switching devices.     

β-FeSi2 as the bottom absorber of triple-junction thin-film solar cells: A numerical study

Using β-FeSi2 as the bottom absorber of triple-junction thin-film solar cells is investigated by a numerical method for widening the long-wave spectral response. The presented results show that the β-FeSi2 subcell can contribute 0.273 V of open-circuit voltage to the a-Si/μc-Si/β-FeSi2 triple-junction thin-film solar cell. The optimized absorber thicknesses for a- Si, μ-Si, and/3-FeSi2 subcells are 260 nm, 900 nm, and 40 nm, respectively. In addition, the temperature coefficient of the conversion efficiency of the a-Si/μc-Si//3-FeSi2 cell is -0.308 %/K, whose absolute value is only greater than that of the a-Si subcell. This result indicates that the a-Si/μc-Si/β-FeSi2 triple-junction solar cell has a good temperature coefficient. As a result, using β-FeSi2 as the bottom absorber can improve the thin-film solar cell performance, and the a-Si/μc-Si/β-FeSi2 triple-junction solar cell is a promising structure configuration for improving the solar cell efficiency.     

A novel integrated ultraviolet photodetector based on standard CMOS process

A novel integrated ultraviolet(UV) photodetector has been proposed, which realizes a high UV selectivity by combining a conventional UV-selective photodiode with an extra infrared(IR) photodiode. The IR photodiode is designed for compensating the photocurrent response of the UV photodiode in the infrared band and is 15 times smaller than the UV one. The integrated photodetector has been fabricated in a 0.35 μm standard CMOS technology. Some critical performance indices of this new structure photodetector, such as spectral responsivity, breakdown voltage, quenching waveform, and transient response, are measured and analyzed. Test results show that the complementary UV–IR photodetector has a maximum spectral responsivity of 0.27 A·W-1 at the wavelength of 400 nm. The device has a high UV selectivity of 3000,which is much higher than that of the single UV photodiode.     

High-performance self-powered photodetector based on organic/inorganic hybrid van der Waals heterojunction of rubrene/silicon

Organic/inorganic hybrid van der Waals heterostructure with an atomically abrupt interface has attracted great research interests within the field of multifunctional electronic and optoelectronic devices. The integration of organic rubrene films with inorganic Si semiconductors can avoid the atomic mutual-diffusion at the interface, and provide the possibility of forming two-dimensional van der Waals heterojunction accompanied with the type-II energy band alignment, due to the transfer behaviors of majority carriers at the interface. In this study, the high-quality rubrene/Si van der Waals heterostructure with an electronically abrupt junction was prepared, and a self-powered photodetector was then constructed based on this hybrid heterojunction. The photodetector demonstrated an excellent switching response to the 1064 nm monochromatic light with large on/off current ratio of 7.0×10~3, the maximum photocurrent of 14.62 m A, the maximum responsivity of 2.07 A/W, the maximum detectivity of 2.9×10~(11) Jones, and a fast response time of 13.0 μs. This study offers important guidance for preparing high-quality rubrene/Si hybrid van der Waals heterostructure with desirable band alignment, and the designed heterojunction photodetector has an important application prospect in the field of multifunctional optoelectronics.     

High-performance 4H-SiC junction barrier Schottky diodes with double resistive termination extensions

4H-SiC junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diodes with a high-temperature annealed resistive termination extension (HARTE) are designed, fabricated and characterized in this work. The differential specific on-state resistance of the device is as low as 3.64 m ·cm2 with a total active area of 2.46×10-3 cm2 . Ti is the Schottky contact metal with a Schottky barrier height of 1.08 V and a low onset voltage of 0.7V. The ideality factor is calculated to be 1.06. Al implantation annealing is performed at 1250℃ in Ar, while good reverse characteristics are achieved. The maximum breakdown voltage is 1000 V with a leakage current of 9×10-5 A on chip level. These experimental results show good consistence with the simulation results and demonstrate that high-performance 4H-SiC JBS diodes can be obtained based on the double HARTE structure.     

Rectifying characteristics and solar-blind photoresponse in β-Ga_2O_3/ZnO heterojunctions

Heterojunctions composed of β-Ga_2 O_3 and ZnO films are fabricated on sapphire substrates by using the laser molecular beam epitaxy method. The heterojunction possesses excellent rectifying characteristics with an asymmetry ratio over 105. Prominent solar-blind photoresponse effect is also observed in the formed heterojunction. The photodetector exhibits a self-powered behavior with a fast response speed(rise time and decay time are 0.035 s and 0.032 s respectively) at zero bias. The obtained high performance can be related to the built-in field driven photogenerated electron-hole separation.     

A Silicon-Based Positive-Intrinsic-Negative Photodetector Double Linear Array on a Thick Intrinsic Epitaxial Layer

To measure small particles in clouds without the optical amplification system, a new type of p-i-n photodetector linear array with 128 diode units altogether is designed and realized. In each die, there are two rows of photodiode line array, and each row has 64 photodiodes. Every photodiode has a size of 100 μm × 100 μm with an individual output, and each of them is isolated by the trenches. The depth of them has the same thickness as that of the epitaxial layer, which is designed to be 30 μm to guarantee sufficient absorption of photons and leave a margin for the diffusion of p-type and n-type region. The detector has been tested with a laser whose wavelength was 650nm and irradiance is 50mW/cm2. The achieved photocurrent is 2μA. Hence, the current responsivity is about 0.4A/W, and the external quantum efficiency is 76.45%. The dark current is less than 600pA. Both of the sufficient absorption of photons and low dark current are achieved by utilizing the thick epitaxial intrinsic layer. Low interference of adjacent photodiodes is also guaranteed by the trenches around the photodiodes. With the obtained performance, the photodetector can be used to measure the diameter of precipitation particles in clouds. Therefore, rainfall can be judged based on the diameter of particles.     

Morphologies of Fe-66.7 at.%Si alloy solidified in a drop tube

Because of their unusual optical, thermoelectric, and magnetic properties, iron sili- cides have attracted considerable attention in recent years. Among them, particular at- tention has been paid to the orthorhombic semiconducting iron disilicide β-FeSi2 due to its direct band gap of about 0.85 eV at room temperature, which makes it a candidate material to be used in optoelectronic devices in near-infrared light sources and detectors. In addition, β-FeSi2 has good physical and chemical sta…     

The simulation of temperature dependence of responsivity and response time for 6H-SiC UV photodetector

In this paper the temperature dependence of responsivity and response time for 6H-SiC ultraviolet (UV) photodetector is simulated based on numerical model in the range from 300K to 900K. The simulation results show that the responsivity and the response time of device are less sensitive to temperature and this kind of UV photodetector has excellent temperature stability. Also the effects of device structure and bias voltage on the responsivity and the response time are presented. The thicker the drift region is, the higher the responsivity and the longer the response time are. So the thickness of drift region has to be carefully designed to make trade-off between responsivity and response time.     

An Improved Room-Temperature Silicon Terahertz Photodetector on Sapphire Substrates

We design and fabricate a good performance silicon photoconductive terahertz detector on sapphire substrates at room temperature.The best voltage responsivity of the detector is 6679 V/W at frequency 300 GHz as well as low voltage noise of 3.8 nV/Hz~(1/2) for noise equivalent power 0.57 pW/Hz~(1/2).The measured response time of the device is about 9 μs,demonstrating that the detector has a speed of110 kHz.The achieved good performance,together with large detector size(acceptance area is 3μm×160μm),simple structure,easy manufacturing method,compatibility with mature silicon technology,and suitability for large-scale fabrication of imaging arrays provide a promising approach to the development of sensitive terahertz room-temperature detectors.     

Influences of polarization effect and p-region doping concentration on the photocurrent response of solar-blind p–i–n avalanche photodiodes

The influences of polarization and p-region doping concentration on the photocurrent response of Al0.4Ga0.6N/Al0.4Ga0.6N/Al0.65Ga0.35N p–i–n avalanche photodetector are studied in a wide range of reverse bias voltages.The simulation results indicate that the photocurrent under high inverse bias voltage decreases with the increase of polarization effect,but increases rapidly with the increase of effective doping concentration in p-type region.These phenomena are analyzed based on the calculations of the intensity and distribution of the electric field.A high p-region doping concentration in the p–i–n avalanche photodetector is shown to be important for the efficient compensation for the detrimental polarization-induced electrostatic field.     

Resonant energy transfer from nanocrystal Si to β-FeSi2 in hybrid Si/β-FeSi2 film

The photoluminescence （PL） characteristics of hybrid β-FeSi2/Si and pure β-FeSi2 films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition at 20 K are investigated. The intensity of the 1.54-μm PL from the former is enhanced, but the enhancement vanishes when the excitation wavelength is larger than the widened band gap of Si nanocrystal. Time-resolved PL decay measurements reveal that the lifetime of the photo-excited carriers in the hybrid β-FeSi2/Si film is longer than that in the pure β-FeSi2 film, providing evidence that the PL enhancement results from the resonant charge transfer from nanocrystalline Si to β-FeSi2.     

Enhanced near-infrared responsivity of silicon photodetector by the impurity photovoltaic effect

The near-infrared responsivity of a silicon photodetector employing the impurity photovoltaic(IPV) effect is investigated with a numerical method. The improvement of the responsivity can reach 0.358 A/W at a wavelength of about1200 nm, and its corresponding quantum efficiency is 41.1%. The origin of the enhanced responsivity is attributed to the absorption of sub-bandgap photons, which results in the carrier transition from the impurity energy level to the conduction band. The results indicate that the IPV effect may provide a general approach to enhancing the responsivity of photodetectors.     

Ultraviolet Phototransistors on AlGaN/GaN Heterostructures

We report on the fabrication and characterization of phototransistors based on AIGaN/GaN heterostructure grown over 6H-SiC substrates. The device has two functions： as a high electron mobility transistor （HEMT） and an ultraviolet photodetector at the same time. As an HEMT, its maximum transconductance is 170mS/ram, while the minimum cutoff frequency fT and the maximum oscillation frequency fm are 19 and 35 GHz, respectively. As a photodetector, the device is visible blind, with an ultraviolet/green contrast of three orders of magnitude, and a responsivity as high as 1700 A/W at the wavelength of 362nm.     

Fabrication and Investigation of an Upconversion Quantum-Well-Infrared Photodetector Integrated with a Light-Emitting Diode

We report the fabrication of an upconversion infrared detector, i.e. a quantum well infrared photodetector integrated with a light-emitting diode (named as QWIP-LED). The infrared photo-response spectrum in the upconversion process is in good agreement with the normal photocurrent spectrum of the QWIP, which demonstrates that the long wavelength infrared band at 8μm has been transferred to the near infrared band at 0.8μm by the upconversion process.     

Tunable 2H–TaSe_2 room-temperature terahertz photodetector

Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides(TMDs) provide fertile ground to study the interplay between dimensionality and electronic properties because they exhibit a variety of electronic phases, such as semiconducting, superconducting, charge density waves(CDW) states, and other unconventional physical properties. Compared with other classical TMDs, such as Mott insulator 1T–TaS_2 or superconducting 2H–NbSe_2, bulk 2H–TaSe_2 has been a canonical system and a touchstone for modeling the CDW measurement with a less complex phase diagram. In contrast to ordinary semiconductors that have only single-particle excitations, CDW can have collective excitation and carry current in a collective fashion. However, manipulating this collective condensation of these intriguing systems for device applications has not been explored. Here, the CDW-induced collective driven of non-equilibrium carriers in a field-effect transistor has been demonstrated for the sensitive photodetection at the highly-pursuit terahertz band. We show that the 2H–TaSe_2-based photodetector exhibits a fast photoresponse, as short as 14 μs, and a responsivity of over 27 V/W at room temperature. The fast response time, relative high responsivity and ease of fabrication of these devices yields a new prospect of exploring CDW condensate in TMDs with the aim of overcoming the existing limitations for a variety of practical applications at THz spectral range.     

Photoluminescence and electroluminescence properties of ZnO films on p-type silicon wafers

A simplified n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction has been prepared by growing n-type ZnO rods on p-type silicon wafer through the chemical vapour deposition method. The reflectance spectrum of the sample shows an independent absorption peak at 384 nm, which may be originated from the bound states at the junction. In the photoluminescence spectrum a new emission band is shown at 393 nm, besides the bandedge emission at 380 nm. The electroluminescence spectrum of the n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction shows a stable yellow luminescence band centred at 560 nm,which can be attributed to the emission from trapped states. Another kind of discrete ZnO rod has also been prepared on such silicon wafer and is encapsulated with carbonated polystyrene for electroluminescence detection. This composite structure shows a weak ultraviolet electroluminescence band at 395 nm and a yellow electroluminescence band. These data prove that surface modification which blocks the transverse movement of carriers between neighbouring nanorods plays important roles in the ultraviolet emission of ZnO nanorods. These findings are vital for future display device design.     

A method to extend wavelength into middle-wavelength infrared based on InAsSb/(Al)GaSb interband transition quantum well infrared photodetector

We present a method to extend the operating wavelength of the interband transition quantum well photodetector from an extended short-wavelength infrared region to a middle-wavelength infrared region. In the modified In As Sb quantum well, Ga Sb is replaced with Al Sb/Al Ga Sb, the valence band of the barrier material is lowered, the first restricted energy level is higher than the valence band of the barrier material, the energy band structure forms type-II structure. The photocurrent spectrum manifest that the fabricated photodetector exhibits a response range from 1.9 μm to 3.2 μm with two peaks at 2.18 μm and 3.03 μm at 78 K.     

Improved carrier transport in Mn:ZnSe quantum dots sensitized La-doped nano-TiO2 thin film

Mn:ZnSe/ZnS/L-Cys core-shell quantum dots(QDs)sensitized La-doped nano-TiO2 thin film(QDSTF)was prepared.X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS),nanosecond transient photovoltaic(TPV),and steady state surface photovoltaic(SPV)technologies were used for probing the photoelectron behaviors in the Mn-doped QDSTF.The results revealed that the Mn-doped QDSTF had a p-type TPV characteristic.The bottom of the conduction band of the QDs as a sensitizer was just 0.86 eV above that of the La-doped nano-TiO2 thin film,while the acceptor level of the doped Mn2+ions was located at about 0.39 eV below and near the bottom of the conduction band of the QDs.The intensity of the SPV response of the Mn-doped QDSTF at a specific wavelength was ~2.1 times higher than that of the undoped QDSTF.The region of the SPV response of the Mn-doped QDSTF was extended by 191 nm to almost the whole visible region as compared with the undoped QDSTF one.And the region of the TPV response of the Mn-doped QDSTF was also obviously wider than that of the undoped QDSTF.These PV characteristics of the Mn-doped QDSTF may be due to the prolonged lifetime and extended diffusion length of photogenerated free charge carriers injected into the sensitized La-doped nano-TiO2 thin film.     

SiC based Si/SiC heterojunction and its rectifying characteristics

The Si on SiC heterojunction is still poorly understood, although it has a number of potential applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices, for example, light-activated SiC power switches where Si may play the role of an light absorbing layer. This paper reports on Si films heteroepitaxially grown on the Si face of (0001) n-type 6H-SiC substrates and the use of B₂H_6 as a dopant for p-Si grown at temperatures in a range of 700--950~\du. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) tests have demonstrated that the samples prepared at the temperatures ranged from 850~℃ to 900~℃ are characterized as monocrystalline silicon. The rocking XRD curves show a well symmetry with FWHM of 0.4339° Omega. Twin crystals and stacking faults observed in the epitaxial layers might be responsible for widening of the rocking curves. Dependence of the crystal structure and surface topography on growth temperature is discussed based on the experimental results. The energy band structure and rectifying characteristics of the Si/SiC heterojunctions are also preliminarily tested.