Polarization-Assisted AlGaN Heterostructure-Based Solar-Blind Ultraviolet MSM Photodetectors With Enhanced Performance

In this work, a high-performance metal–semiconductor–metal solar-blind ultraviolet photodetector (UV PD) based on AlGaN heterostructure (AlGaNH) is fabricated. By utilizing the built-in polarization effect, a highly conductive two-dimensional electron gas channel is induced at the Al <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_0.65 </tex-math> Ga <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_0.35N </tex-math> /Al <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_0.4 </tex-math> Ga <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_0.6N </tex-math> heterointerface. The AlGaNH PD exhibits a high peak responsivity of 3.42 A/W at 270 nm, which is considerably higher than that of the control AlGaN PD without polarization enhancement. Meanwhile, the device exhibits a low dark current of <tex-math notation="LaTeX">1.2× 10^-11 </tex-math> A at 10 V bias, which results in a high photo-to-dark current ratio exceeding <tex-math notation="LaTeX">7× 10^3 </tex-math> even when the incident light intensity is as low as <tex-math notation="LaTeX">~ 5 μ W </tex-math> /cm 2 . A theoretical analysis of gain mechanism reveals that the high responsivity can be attributed to the longer lifetime and shorter drift time of the photogenerated carriers within the heterointerface channel. A high specific detectivity can be achieved at elevated temperatures, while a fast response speed can be maintained even at low incident light intensity. This work provides a viable approach to enhance the detection performance of AlGaN-based solar-blind PDs.