III-V Compound Semiconductor Based Photodetectors and Their Applications

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "D1: Semiconductor Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 7896

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Electronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Interests: wide bandwidth photodetectors; compound semiconductor; photonic terahertz devices; nanophotonics

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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, China
Interests: infrared focal plane array detector; single photon avalanche diode; metasurfaces

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Guest Editor
Department of Photonics & Quantum Technology, Institute of Electronic Engineering of China Academy of Engineering Physics, Microsystem & Terahertz Research Center of CAEP, Chengdu 610200, China
Interests: ultraviolet and infrared photo detectors; compound semiconductor; photoelectronic device; nano photonics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Photodetectors based on III-V compound materials, such as GaAs, InP, GaN, GaSb, etc., can operate in a broad spectral range from UV to IR by modulating the components. These photodetectors, with features of high sensitivity, fast response and great responsiveness, show great significance in photovoltaic, radiation imaging, sensing, communication, terahertz technology and other fields. In particular, many new methods and novel device structures are proposed such as nanowires, quantum dots and superlattices, which make the advantages of III-V materials fully exploited and the performance of detectors continuously improved. Together with the rapid development of device processing technology and heterogeneous integration technology, flexible III-V photodetectors and III-V quantum dot photodetectors heterogeneous integrated on silicon substrates have been reported recently, illustrating great potential in efficient, high density and low-cost on-chip photonics.

This Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers, letters, and review articles focusing on III-V compound semiconductor based photodetectors and their applications. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: device physics; modeling and simulation; new device structures; devices with improved performance; material synthesis; advanced readout and integrate circuit; device preparation process and integration technology; novel applications of III-V photodetectors, etc.

Prof. Dr. Mo Li
Dr. Wenjuan Wang
Dr. Qian Li
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

8 pages, 2942 KiB  
Article
Free-Running Single-Photon Detection via GHz Gated InGaAs/InP APD for High Time Resolution and Count Rate up to 500 Mcount/s
by Wen Wu, Xiao Shan, Yaoqiang Long, Jing Ma, Kun Huang, Ming Yan, Yan Liang and Heping Zeng
Micromachines 2023, 14(2), 437; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14020437 - 12 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2055
Abstract
Free-running InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche photodiodes (SPADs) typically operate in the active-quenching mode, facing the problems of long dead time and large timing jitter. In this paper, we demonstrate a 1-GHz gated InGaAs/InP SPAD with the sinusoidal gating signals asynchronous to the incident pulsed [...] Read more.
Free-running InGaAs/InP single-photon avalanche photodiodes (SPADs) typically operate in the active-quenching mode, facing the problems of long dead time and large timing jitter. In this paper, we demonstrate a 1-GHz gated InGaAs/InP SPAD with the sinusoidal gating signals asynchronous to the incident pulsed laser, enabling free-running single-photon detection. The photon-induced avalanche signals are quenched within 1 ns, efficiently reducing the SPAD’s dead time and achieving a count rate of up to 500 Mcount/s. However, the timing jitter is measured to be ~168 ps, much larger than that of the SPAD with synchronous gates. We adjust the delay between the gating signals and the incident pulsed laser to simulate the random arrival of the photons, and record the timing jitter, respectively, to figure out the cause of the jitter deterioration. In addition, the effects of the incident laser power and working temperature of the APD on the time resolution have been investigated, broadening the applications of the GHz gated free-running SPAD in laser ranging and imaging, fluorescence spectroscopy detection and optical time-domain reflectometry. Full article
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9 pages, 1347 KiB  
Article
Focus on the Avalanche Breakdown Characteristic of Si- and InP-Based APDs Irradiated by Fast Neutrons
by Jianbin Kang, Qian Li, Xiang Fu, Feiliang Chen and Mo Li
Micromachines 2023, 14(1), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14010086 - 29 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1264
Abstract
The Si- and InP-based APDs as the most important weak light semiconductor photodetectors to have achieved commercial success and are widely used in irradiation environments. Investigating the influencing mechanism of neutron irradiation on the above two types of APDs is of scientific and [...] Read more.
The Si- and InP-based APDs as the most important weak light semiconductor photodetectors to have achieved commercial success and are widely used in irradiation environments. Investigating the influencing mechanism of neutron irradiation on the above two types of APDs is of scientific and practical importance. In this paper, the dark current and gain characteristics of Si- and InP-based APDs around breakdown voltage were analyzed in detail before and after irradiation. The increase of dark current and the decrease of gain were observed for both the neutron irradiated Si- and InP-based APDs. Generation centers induced by neutrons are responsible for the increased dark current. The decrease of gain can be attributed to the increase of multiplied dark current and the change of electric field distribution in APD. The Si-based APD exhibits soft breakdown with the breakdown voltage reduced by ~8 V under the neutron fluence of 1.0 × 1012 cm−2, while the soft breakdown occurs along with a small change of breakdown voltage of ~1.5 V under the neutron fluence of 1.0 × 1013 cm−2 for InP-based APD. The difference in the change of breakdown voltage probably occurs because the Si-based APD uses p-doped Si as the multiplication layer, in which the neutron induced carrier removing effect cannot be ignored to keep the electric field distribution away from the optimal state. Therefore, using an intrinsic multiplication layer in APD is helpful to improve the neutron radiation resistance. The findings here are not only useful for the radiation hardened design of APD, but also deepen the understanding of irradiation mechanism. Full article
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8 pages, 4099 KiB  
Article
Simulation Study on the Structure Design of p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN HEMT-Based Ultraviolet Phototransistors
by Haiping Wang, Haifan You, Jiangui Yang, Minqiang Yang, Lu Wang, Hong Zhao, Zili Xie and Dunjun Chen
Micromachines 2022, 13(12), 2210; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13122210 - 13 Dec 2022
Viewed by 2131
Abstract
This work investigates the impacts of structural parameters on the performances of p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN HEMT-based ultraviolet (UV) phototransistors (PTs) using Silvaco Atlas. The simulation results show that a larger Al content or greater thickness for the AlGaN barrier layer can induce a higher two-dimensional [...] Read more.
This work investigates the impacts of structural parameters on the performances of p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN HEMT-based ultraviolet (UV) phototransistors (PTs) using Silvaco Atlas. The simulation results show that a larger Al content or greater thickness for the AlGaN barrier layer can induce a higher two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) density and produce a larger photocurrent. However, they may also lead to a larger dark current due to the incomplete depletion of the GaN channel layer. The depletion conditions with various Al contents and thicknesses of the AlGaN layer are investigated in detail, and a borderline between full depletion and incomplete depletion was drawn. An optimized structure with an Al content of 0.23 and a thickness of 14 nm is achieved for UV-PT, which exhibits a high photocurrent density of 92.11 mA/mm, a low dark current density of 7.68 × 10−10 mA/mm, and a large photo-to-dark-current ratio of over 1011 at a drain voltage of 5 V. In addition, the effects of other structural parameters, such as the thickness and hole concentration of the p-GaN layer as well as the thickness of the GaN channel layer, on the performances of the UV-PTs are also studied in this work. Full article
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13 pages, 6617 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Manufacturing Imperfections on the Performance of Metalenses and a Manufacturing-Tolerant Design Method
by Yicheng Zhu, Wenjuan Wang, Feilong Yu, Qingquan Liu, Zilu Guo, Guanhai Li, Pingping Chen and Wei Lu
Micromachines 2022, 13(9), 1531; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13091531 - 16 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1587
Abstract
Metalenses play an important role in optoelectronic integrated devices, given their advantages in miniaturization and integration. Due to its high aspect ratio subwavelength structure, fabricating metalenses requires a high-level dry etching technology. Consequently, structure deformation of the metalens will exist if the etching [...] Read more.
Metalenses play an important role in optoelectronic integrated devices, given their advantages in miniaturization and integration. Due to its high aspect ratio subwavelength structure, fabricating metalenses requires a high-level dry etching technology. Consequently, structure deformation of the metalens will exist if the etching process of the material is not mature enough, which will impair the metalens’ performance. In this paper, a polarization-independent InP dielectric metalens is designed to focus the incident light from air into the substrate, which is used for monolithically integrating with the InGaAs/InP photodetector in the future. Subsequently, with the simulation method, we investigated the impact of the structure deformation on the metalens’ performance, which was found in our InP dry etching process development. We have found that the sidewall slope and aspect ratio-dependent etching effect greatly impaired the focusing efficiency because of the phase modulation deviation. To solve this problem, we proposed a manufacturing-tolerant design method, which effectively improved the performance of the device with structural deformation. Our work is instructive for developing metalenses and can accelerate their integration application. Full article
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