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The road ahead for ultrawide bandgap solar-blind UV photodetectors

Kalra, Anisha and Muazzam, Usman Ul and Muralidharan, R and Raghavan, Srinivasan and Nath, Digbijoy N (2022) The road ahead for ultrawide bandgap solar-blind UV photodetectors. In: Journal of Applied Physics, 131 (15). ISSN 0021-8979

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0082348

Abstract

This Perspective seeks to understand and assess why ultrawide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductor-based deep-UV photodetectors have not yet found any noticeable presence in real-world applications despite riding on more than two decades of extensive materials and devices’ research. Keeping the discussion confined to photodetectors based on epitaxial AlGaN and Ga2O3, a broad assessment of the device performance in terms of its various parameters is done vis-à-vis the dependence on the material quality. We introduce a new comprehensive figure of merit (CFOM) to benchmark photodetectors by accounting for their three most critical performance parameters, i.e., gain, noise, and bandwidth. We infer from CFOM that purely from the point of view of device performance, AlGaN detectors do not have any serious shortcoming that is holding them back from entering the market. We try to identify the gaps that exist in the research landscape of AlGaN and Ga2O3 solar-blind photodetectors and also argue that merely improving the material/structural quality and device performance would not help in making this technology transition from the academic realm. Instead of providing a review, this Perspective asks the hard question on whether UWBG solar-blind detectors will ever find real-world applications in a noticeable way and whether these devices will be ever used in space-borne platforms for deep-space imaging, for instance.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: Journal of Applied Physics
Publisher: American Institute of Physics Inc.
Additional Information: The Copyright of this article belongs to the American Institute of Physics Inc.
Keywords: Aluminum alloys; Aluminum gallium nitride; Benchmarking; Energy gap; Gallium alloys; III-V semiconductors; Photons; Semiconductor alloys; Space platforms; Wide band gap semiconductors; Band-gap semiconductors; Comprehensive figure of merits; Critical performance parameters; Deep uv; Device performance; Materials quality; Real-world; Solar blind; Ultra-wide; UV photodetectors; Photodetectors
Department/Centre: Division of Interdisciplinary Sciences > Centre for Nano Science and Engineering
Date Deposited: 24 May 2022 05:23
Last Modified: 24 May 2022 05:23
URI: https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/72357

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