Impact of hetero-interface on the photoresponse of GAN/SIC separate absorption and multiplication avalanche photodiodes

III-Nitride/SIC separate absorption and multiplication avalanche photodiodes (SAM APDs) provide a new approach for realizing high sensitivity, high gain and low dark current detectors with a response that is tunable over a wide spectral range. However, the heterojunction interface plays a significant role in the performance of these detectors due to presence of 1) interface charge arising from the difference in polarization between III-Nitride and SiC as well as 2) defects at the interface resulting from lattice mismatch. In this paper we discuss the growth and fabrication of GaN/SiC SAM APDs and analyze the behavior in the context of these two factors.