• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.213-224
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• 2010

An optically controlled silicon MESFET (OPFET) was fabricated by diffusion process to enhance the quantum efficiency, which is the most important optoelectronic device performance usually affected by ion implantation process due to large number of process induced defects. The desired impurity distribution profile and the junction depth were obtained solely with diffusion, and etching processes monitored by atomic force microscope, spreading resistance profiling and C-V measurements. With this approach fabrication induced defects are reduced, leading to significantly improved performance. The fabricated OPFET devices showed proper I-V characteristics with desired pinch-off voltage and threshold voltage for normally-on devices. The peak photoresponsivity was obtained at 620 nm wavelength and the extracted external quantum efficiency from the photoresponse plot was found to be approximately 87.9%. This result is evidence of enhancement of device quantum efficiency fabricated by the diffusion process. It also supports the fact that the diffusion process is an extremely suitable process for fabrication of high performance optoelectronic devices. The maximum gain of OPFET at optical modulated signal was obtained at the frequency of 1 MHz with rise time and fall time approximately of 480 nS. The extracted transconductance shows the possible potential of device speed performance improvements for shorter gate length. The results support the use of a diffusion process for fabrication of high performance optoelectronic devices.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.196-208
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• 2007

An analytical model is proposed for an optically controlled Metal Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MESFET), known as Optical Field Effect Transistor (OPFET) considering the diffusion fabrication process. The electrical parameters such as threshold voltage, drain-source current, gate capacitances and switching response have been determined for the dark and various illuminated conditions. The Photovoltaic effect due to photogenerated carriers under illumination is shown to modulate the channel cross-section, which in turn significantly changes the threshold voltage, drainsource current, the gate capacitances and the device switching speed. The threshold voltage $V_T$ is reduced under optical illumination condition, which leads the device to change the device property from enhancement mode to depletion mode depending on photon impurity flux density. The resulting I-V characteristics show that the drain-source current IDS for different gate-source voltage $V_{gs}$ is significantly increased with optical illumination for photon flux densities of ${\Phi}=10^{15}\;and\;10^{17}/cm^2s$ compared to the dark condition. Further more, the drain-source current as a function of drain-source voltage $V_{DS}$ is evaluated to find the I-V characteristics for various pinch-off voltages $V_P$ for optimization of impurity flux density $Q_{Diff}$ by diffusion process. The resulting I-V characteristics also show that the diffusion process introduces less process-induced damage compared to ion implantation, which suffers from current reduction due to a large number of defects introduced by the ion implantation process. Further the results show significant increase in gate-source capacitance $C_{gs}$ and gate-drain capacitance $C_{gd}$ for optical illuminations, where the photo-induced voltage has a significant role on gate capacitances. The switching time ${\tau}$ of the OPFET device is computed for dark and illumination conditions. The switching time ${\tau}$ is greatly reduced by optical illumination and is also a function of device active layer thickness and corresponding impurity flux density $Q_{Diff}$. Thus it is shown that the diffusion process shows great potential for improvement of optoelectronic devices in quantum efficiency and other performance areas.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.15-30
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• 2004

In this paper, an analytical modeling for the dark and photo-current characteristics of a buried-gate short- channel GaAs MESFET is presented. The presented model shows that the increase of drain current under illumination is largely due to not the increase of photo-conductivity in the neutral region but the narrowing effect of the depletion layer width. The carrier density profile within the neutral region is derived from solving the carrier continuity equation one-dimensionally. In deriving the photo-generated current, we assume that the photo-current is compensated with the thermionic emission current at the gate-channel interface. Moreover, the two-dimensional Poisson's equation is solved by taking into account the drain-induced longitudinal field effect. In conclusion, the proposed model seems to provide a reasonable explanation for the dark and photo current characteristics in a unified manner.