Effect of metal-precursor gas ratios on AlInN/GaN structures for high efficiency ultraviolet photodiodes

The authors report on the effect of metal-precursor gas ratios on AlInN/GaN structures for high efficiency ultraviolet photodiodes. AlInN/GaN structures with the different metal-precursor gas ratio, namely V/III ratio, were grown on AlN templates by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. Nearly lattice-matched AlInN layer is obtained at the higher temperature by decreasing the V/III ratio. AlInN layers are found to have good crystal qualities with no dependency on the V/III ratio. However, pit density depends slightly on the V/III ratio, indicating good surface morphology is obtained by decreasing the V/III ratio. The fabricated photodiodes also show good device characteristics by decreasing the V/III ratio. The spectral responsivity at the cutoff wavelength increases from 1 to 20 mA/W, indicating that the quantum efficiency is greatly improved. We believe that the further optimization of the growth parameters for AlInN/GaN structures is one of the effective approaches in realizing high efficiency ultra...