Advances in Group-III-Nitride Photodetectors

Abstract

Group-III nitrides are considered to be a strategic technology for the development of ultraviolet photodetectors due to their remarkable properties in terms of spectral selectivity, radiation hardness, and noise. The potential advantages of these materials were initially obscured by their large density of intrinsic defects. The advances were thus associated in general with improvements in material quality. Although technology still also needs improvement, efforts are being intensified in the fabrication of advanced structures for photodetector applications. In particular, this review discusses the recent progress in group-III-nitride photodetectors, emphasizing the work reported on quantum-well-based photodetectors, the use of novel structures exploiting the effect of piezoelectric polarization-induced fields, and polarization-sensitive photodetectors. Furthermore, some ideas can be generalized to other material systems such as ZnO and their related compounds, which exhibit the same crystal structure as group-III nitrides.

A Comprehensive Review of Semiconductor Ultraviolet Photodetectors: From Thin Film to One-Dimensional Nanostructures

“…Despite the deficiencies in the material and contact quality, these structures offer remarkable advantages such as a lower expected noise, a more abrupt response cutoff, and an easier processing integration [54–56]. Rivera et al .…”

Deposit of AlN thin films by nitrogen reactive pulsed laser ablation using an Al target

“…Group III nitrides have been studied extensively because of their potential applications in optoelectronic devices, such as photodetectors [1], UV light emitting diodes (UV LEDs) and UV laser diodes (UV LDs) [2,3]. Aluminum nitride (AlN) has a direct band gap of 6.2 eV [4], a high thermal conductivity of 285 W m −1 K −1 [5] and a high melting point (3273 K) [6]; characteristics useful in applications as GaN/AlN superlattice [7] and high-reflectance distributed Bragg-reflectors [8].…”

Network of vertically c-oriented prismatic InN nanowalls grown on c-GaN/sapphire template by chemical vapor deposition technique

“…III-V semiconductor nitrides, such as GaN, InN, and AlN, are extensively studied for their applications in electronics and optoelectronics. Among these nitrides, Indium nitride (InN) has the smallest bandgap (~0.7 eV), which makes it potentially interesting for solar cells and infrared detectors [1,2,[6][7][8]. Moreover, theoretical mobility of electrons at room temperature can be as high as 14000 cm 2 /V⋅s in InN [3], which is order of magnitude larger than that of GaN (1000 cm 2 /V⋅s) [4].…”