Measurement of the room temperature forward bias current-voltage behavior of InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure blue light-emitting diodes demonstrates a significant departure from the usual Is exp(qV/ nkT) behavior where n is the ideality factor which varies between 1 and 2. The observed current-voltage behavior at room temperature may be represented as I=2.7×10−11 exp(5.7V) which suggests a tunneling mechanism. Measurement of the electroluminescence for currents from 0.5 to 100 mA demonstrates that the emission peak shifts to higher energy while increasing in intensity. The shifting peak spectra is due to band filling, a process which results from the injection of holes via tunneling into an empty acceptor impurity band and vacant valence band tails. At currents near 100 mA, a non-shifting band-to-band emission approaches the intensity of the shifting peak spectra. The active layer of these diodes is codoped with both the donor Si and the acceptor Zn.
We have investigated the spectral response of front-surface-illuminated GaN and AlGaN/GaN p-i-n ultraviolet photodetectors prepared by reactive molecular beam epitaxy on sapphire substrates. GaN homojunction p-i-n photodiodes exhibited a peaked response near the band edge. This enhanced response was absent in the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction p-i-n detectors. We analyzed the effect of p-layer thickness of the GaN p-i-n diodes on the magnitude of the peak photoresponse. The AlGaN/GaN photodiodes had a maximum zero-bias responsivity of 0.12 A/W at 364 nm, which decreased by more than 3 orders of magnitude for wavelengths longer than 390 nm. A reverse bias of −10 V raised the responsivity to 0.15 A/W without any significant increase in noise. The root-mean-square noise current in a 1 Hz bandwidth is ∼1.0 pA, corresponding to a noise-equivalent-power of ∼8.3 pW. We measured extremely fast decay times of 12 ns for the AlGaN/GaN and 29 ns for the GaN photodiodes.
A GaN/AlGaN heterojunction bipolar phototransistor with gain in excess of 105 was demonstrated. From 360 to 400 nm, an eight orders of magnitude drop in responsivity was achieved. The phototransistor features a rapid electrical quenching of persistent photoconductivity, and exhibits high dark impedance and no dc drift. By changing the frequency of the quenching cycles, the detection speed of the phototransistor can be adjusted to accommodate specific applications. These results represent an internal gain UV detector with significantly improved performance over GaN-based photoconductors.
Back-illuminated GaN/AlGaN ultraviolet (UV) heterojunction photodiodes with high quantum efficiencies are demonstrated. Photovoltaic (zero bias) responsivity of 0.2 A/W at 355 nm was achieved. The improved efficiencies primarily arise from the use of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction in which photons are absorbed within the p-n junction thus eliminates carrier losses due to surface recombination and diffusion processes in previously reported homojunction devices. Very high dark impedance and large visible rejection ratio were obtained. These results indicate high quality GaN/AlGaN interface and efficient photocarrier collection in the photodiode.
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