(GaAs/InAs)–GaAsSb digital alloy type-II superlattice for extended short-wavelength infrared detection

Abstract

GaInAs–GaAsSb type-II superlattices (T2SLs) on an InP substrate are promising candidates for an optical absorption layer in the extended short-wavelength region (2–3 μm), offering more flexibility in designing a cutoff wavelength compared to strained GaInAs bulk material. However, T2SL-based photodetectors inherently suffer from lower quantum efficiency (QE) due to the reduced overlap of the wavefunctions of the conduction and valence bands in the optical matrix element of the T2SL. To improve QE, a (GaAs/InAs)–GaAsSb digital alloy T2SL, which replaces the GaInAs random alloy layer in the GaInAs–GaAsSb T2SL with a GaAs/InAs digital alloy, has been proposed recently by an empirical tight-binding calculation. This paper presents a demonstration of a fabricated photodetector using the (GaAs/InAs)–GaAsSb digital alloy grown on an InP substrate by molecular beam epitaxy and shows that the average QE in the wavelength region of 2.3–2.6 μm is approximately 1.6 times higher than that of a conventional GaInAs–GaAsSb T2SL photodetector. Furthermore, the dark-current density of the digital alloy photodetector is lower than that of the GaInAs–GaAsSb T2SL photodetector despite having a longer cutoff wavelength.