Characterization of AlGaN-based metal-semiconductor solar-blind UV photodiodes with IrO2 Schottky contacts

Abstract Intrinsically solar-blind ultraviolet (UV) AlGaN-based Schottky photodiodes were fabricated using Iridium oxide (IrO 2 ) as the Schottky barrier material. The Ir Schottky contacts were annealed at 700 °C under O 2 ambient and the photodiodes characterized with an optoelectronic system. The main parameters extracted from I – V measurements were an average ideality factor of 1.38, a Schottky barrier height of 1.52 eV, a reverse leakage current density at −1 V bias of 5.2 nA/cm 2 and series resistance of 250 Ω . After spectral characterization, it was found that annealing, alone, of the Ir contact to form the more UV transmissive IrO 2 does not always improve the responsivity. The deposition of a Au probe contact on the IrO 2 contact increased the responsivity from 40 mA/W to 52 mA/W at 275 nm with respect to the annealed Ir contact. However, the ideality factor degraded to 1.57, Schottky barrier height lowered to 1.19 eV, reverse leakage current density increased to 49 nA/cm 2 and series resistance decreased to 100 Ω with the addition of the Au contact. The radiation hardness of AlGaN was also confirmed after studying the effects of 5.4 MeV He-ion irradiation using 241 Am for a total fluence of 3 × 10 13  cm −2 .