• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.425-431
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• 2023

An asymmetric metal-semiconductor-metal Al_0.24Ga_0.76N ultraviolet (UV) sensor was fabricated, and the effects of local Joule heating were investigated. After dielectric breakdown, the current density under a reverse bias of 2.0 V was 1.1×10^-9 A/cm², significantly lower than 1.2×10^-8 A/cm² before dielectric breakdown; moreover, the Schottky behavior of the Ti/Al/Ni/Au electrode changed to ohmic behavior under forward bias. The UV-to-visible rejection ratio (UVRR) under a reverse bias of 7.0 V before dielectric breakdown was 87; however, this UVRR significantly increased to 578, in addition to providing highly reliable responsivity. Transmission electron microscopy revealed interdiffusion between adjacent layers, with nitrogen vacancies possibly formed owing to local Joule heating at the AlGaN/Ti/Al/Ni/Au interfaces. X-ray photoelectron microscopy results revealed decreases in the peak intensities of the O 1s binding energies associated with the Ga-O bond and OH-, which act as electron-trapping states on the AlGaN surface. The reduction in dark current owing to the proposed local heating method is expected to increase the sensing performance of UV optoelectronic integrated devices, such as active-pixel UV image sensors.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.346-349
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• 2008

A metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) ultraviolet (UV) photodetector (PD) is proposed as an effective UV sensing device for integration with a GaN n-channel MISFET on auto-doped p-type GaN grown on a silicon substrate. Due to the high hole barrier of the metal-p-GaN contact, the dark current density of the fabricated MSM PD was less than $3\;nA/cm^2$ at a bias of up to 5 V. Meanwhile, the UV/visible rejection ratio was 400 and the cutoff wavelength of the spectral responsivity was 365 nm. However, the UV/visible ratio was limited by the sub-bandgap response, which was attributed to defectrelated deep traps in the p-GaN layer of the MSM PD. In conclusion, an MSM PD has a high process compatibility with the n-channel GaN Schottky barrier MISFET fabrication process and epitaxy on a silicon substrate.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.252-256
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• 2016

Epitaxially grown GaN layers have a high surface state density, which typically results in a surface leakage current and a photoresponse in undesirable wavelengths in GaN optoelectronic devices. Surface passivation is, therefore, an important process necessary to prevent performance degradation of GaN UV photodetectors. In this study, we propose oxygen-enhanced thermal treatment as a simple surface passivation process without capping layers. The GaN UV photodetector fabricated using a thermal annealing process exhibits improved electrical and photoresponsive characteristics such as a reduced dark current and an enhanced photoresponsive current and UV-to-visible rejection ratio. The results of this study show that the proposed surface passivation method would be useful to enhance the reliability of GaN-based optoelectronic devices.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.156-161
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• 2011

We fabricated a schottky barrier metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor(SB-MOSFET) by applying indium-tin-oxide(ITO) to the source/drain on a highly resistive GaN layer grown on a silicon substrate. The MOSFET, with 10 ${\mu}M$ gate length and 100 ${\mu}M$ gate width, exhibits a threshold gate voltage of 2.7 V, and has a sub-threshold slope of 240 mV/dec taken from the $I_{DS}-V_{GS}$ characteristics at a low drain voltage of 0.05 V. The maximum drain current is 18 mA/mm and the maximum transconductance is 6 mS/mm at $V_{DS}$=3 V. We observed that the spectral photo-response characterization exhibits that the cutoff wavelength was 365 nm, and the UV/visible rejection ratio was about 130 at $V_{DS}$ = 5 V. The MOSFET-type UV detector using ITO, has a high UV photo-responsivity and so is highly applicable to the UV image sensors.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.96-100
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• 2005

The planar Schottky diodes were fabricated and modeled to probe the device applicability of the cracked GaN epitaxial layer on a (111) silicon substrate. On the unintentionally n-doped GaN grown on silicon, we deposited Ti/Al/Ni/Au as the ohmic metal and Pt as the Schottky metal. The ohmic contact achieved a minimum contact resistivity of $5.51{\times}10.5{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^{2}$ after annealing in an $N_{2}$ ambient at $700^{\circ}C$ for 30 sec. The fabricated Schottky diode exhibited the barrier height of 0.7 eV and the ideality factor was 2.4, which are significantly lower than those parameters of crack free one. But in photoresponse measurement, the diode showed the peak responsivity of 0.097 A/W at 300 nm, the cutoff at 360 nm, and UV/visible rejection ratio of about $10^{2}$. The SPICE(Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) simulation with a proposed model, which was composed with one Pt/GaN diode and three parasitic diodes, showed good agreement with the experiment.