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High-gain AlGaN/GaN visible-blind avalanche heterojunction phototransistors

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Abstract

We report the fabrication and characterization of the visible-blind AlGaN/GaN-based avalanche heterojunction phototransistors (AHPT) with a collector-up configuration. The fabricated devices with 150-μm-diameter active area exhibit low dark currents of less than 20 pA at collector-emitter voltage (VCE) below 5.0 V. Optical gain as high as 3.6 × 104 was obtained due to the combination of photon-induced current amplification and carrier multiplication at an operating voltage of VCE = 53.5 V, which is much lower than the avalanche breakdown voltage required for GaN-based visible-blind avalanche photodiodes. An ultraviolet–visible rejection ratio of more than 100 was measured at zero bias. Under VCE = 5 V, a peak responsivity of 0.91 A/W was obtained at 335 nm.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2016YFB0400901), the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61634002), Key Realm R&D Program of GuangDong Province, China (Grant 2019B010132004), and Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2015A030312011).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China

    Xinjia Qiu, Zhiyuan Song, Lijie Sun, Zhenhua Zhang, Zesheng Lv, Quan Wen & Hao Jiang

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  1. Xinjia Qiu
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Correspondence to Hao Jiang.

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Qiu, X., Song, Z., Sun, L. et al. High-gain AlGaN/GaN visible-blind avalanche heterojunction phototransistors. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 31, 652–657 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-019-02571-8

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