Rule 07,'' a simple empirical relationship, conveniently estimates stateof-the-art HgCdTe dark current performance over 13 orders of magnitude, covering wavelength ranges form short-wave infrared (SWIR) to long-wave infrared (LWIR), from room temperature to liquid nitrogen temperatures. The best HgCdTe, in some cases, approaches the external radiative limit of performance, but is typically two to three orders of magnitude above that, being limited by defect generation centers as yet unidentified and/or by Auger mechanisms. The empirical relationship represents the range of detectors fabricated at Teledyne using our molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-based doublelayer planar heterostructure (DLPH) technology, but also appears to characterize good detectors from other laboratories.

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Electron beam induced current measurements on planar Schottky diodes on undoped GaN grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition are reported. The minority carrier diffusion length of 0.28 μm has been measured, indicating minority carrier lifetime of 6.5 ns. The tapping mode atomic force microscopy imaging of the surfaces and scanning electron microscopy of the cross sections have been used to characterize the linear dislocations and columnar structure of the GaN. The possible influence of recombination on the extended defects in GaN on the minority carrier diffusion length and lifetime is discussed, and contrasted to other recombination mechanisms.

We fabricated high standoff voltage ͑450 V͒ Schottky rectifiers on hydride vapor phase epitaxy grown GaN on sapphire substrate. Several Schottky device geometries were investigated, including lateral geometry with rectangular and circular contacts, mesa devices, and Schottky metal field plate overlapping a SiO 2 layer. The best devices were characterized by an ON-state voltage of 4.2 V at a current density of 100 A/cm 2 and a saturation current density of 10 Ϫ5 A/cm 2 at a reverse bias of 100 V. From the measured breakdown voltage we estimated the critical field for electric breakdown in GaN to be (2.2Ϯ0.7)ϫ10 6 V/cm. This value for the critical field is a lower limit since most of the devices exhibited abrupt and premature breakdown associated with corner and edge effects. © 1999 American Institute of Physics. ͓S0003-6951͑99͒02409-2͔Wide band gap materials, primarily SiC and GaN, have recently attracted a lot of interest for applications in high power and high temperature electronics. Although the processing technology for SiC is more mature, GaN offers several advantages. First, there are various device possibilities using GaN/AlGaN heterojunctions which are not available in the SiC system. Second, the availability of cheap and efficient hydride vapor phase epitaxy ͑HVPE͒ growth technology achieving growth rates in excess of 100 m/h, have produced thick, high quality GaN layers on sapphire. 1 Third, by using AlGaN layers, one can take advantage of a larger band gap to achieve higher critical electric fields than in GaN alone.In this study, we focus on the fabrication of high voltage, GaN based Schottky rectifiers and the measurement of the critical field for electric breakdown. The critical field for electric breakdown is one of the most significant parameters in the design and performance of high power devices. It directly influences the required thickness of the standoff region in the Schottky rectifier and bipolar devices, such as the thyristor. Since the thickness of the standoff region sets the resistivity of the device, it will determine power dissipation and maximum current density of the device. 2,3 In previous studies, Schottky diodes have been fabricated on GaN using a variety of elemental metals including Pd and Pt, 4,5 , Au, Cr, and Ni,6,7 , and Mo and W. 8 More details on the metal-GaN contact technology can be found in Ref. 9.In this work, Schottky rectifiers were fabricated on 8-10 m thick GaN layers grown by HVPE on sapphire, where the electron concentration changes with the distance from the GaN/sapphire interface. We carried out conductivity and Hall measurements on a series of HVPE GaN films of varying thickness ranging from 0.07 to 9.2 m, and fitted the data to a two layer model. [10][11][12][13] From the model, we concluded that the GaN films consisted of a low conductivity, low electron concentration, 8-10 m thick top layer on a very thin (Ͻ100 nm), highly conductive, high electron concentration bottom layer. The electron concentrations and mobilities in the thin interface layer and thic...