Applied Physics Express 5 (2012) 116701

http://dx.doi.org/10.1143/APEX.5.116701

GaN Schottky Barrier Photodetectors with a -Ga2 O3 Cap Layer

Zhen-Da Huang1 , Ricky Wenkuei Chuang1;2;3
, Wen-Yin Weng1 ,
Shoou-Jinn Chang1;2 , Chiu-Jung Chiu1 , and San-Lein Wu4
1

Institute of Microelectronics and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
Advanced Optoelectronic Technology Center (AOTC) and Center for Micro/Nano Science and Technology,
National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
3
National Nano Device Laboratories (NDL), Tainan 74147, Taiwan
4
Department of Electronic Engineering, Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung 833, Taiwan
2

Received August 24, 2012; accepted September 25, 2012; published online October 18, 2012
GaN Schottky barrier UV photodetectors (PDs) with a
-Ga2 O3 cap layer realized by furnace oxidation of GaN epitaxial layer were fabricated and
characterized. With the cap layer inserted, it was found that the reverse leakage current could be reduced by more than 4 orders of magnitude and
the UV-to-visible rejection ratio increased by 21 times. When compared with the conventional GaN PDs, incorporating an additional
-Ga2 O3 cap
layer helps to reduce the noise level and at the same time achieve a larger detectivity. # 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

n the last few years, various congurations of GaN-based

photodetectors (PDs) have been demonstrated.14) When
compared with other bipolar-based PDs, Schottky barrier
PDs are relatively easier to fabricate and their response speed
is also faster.5) However, the leakage current in Schottky
barrier PDs is comparably higher for a given applied bias.
Due to the large mismatches in lattice constant and thermal
expansion coecient between GaN and sapphire,6,7) the
threading dislocation (TD) density in the epitaxial layer is
inevitably high for GaN grown on sapphire. These TDs could
function as leakage current paths at the metal/GaN interface,
which are primarily responsible for the high leakage current
typically observed in GaN-based Schottky barrier PDs.8) The
leakage current could be reduced by inserting an insulator
between GaN and metal. It has been reported that SiO2 ,
Ta2 O5 , Ga2 O3 , and Al2 O3 can serve as the cap insulator for
nitride-based metalinsulatorsemiconductor devices.912)
In this study,
-Ga2 O3 is used as an insulator layer due to
its comparably larger bandgap energy in a range of 4.8
4.9 eV and higher resistivity. Various methods had already
been proposed to grow
-Ga2 O3 thin lms, including pulsed
laser deposition (PLD), atomic layer deposition (ALD), metal
organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), solgel process, sputtering, and photoelectrochemical oxidation.1318)
In this study, we propose instead to modify the growth of

-Ga2 O3 thin lm by oxidizing the GaN epitaxial layer in a
furnace lled with oxygen at high temperature to convert part
of the GaN into
-Ga2 O3 . When compared with the other
methods as mentioned earlier for the direct growth of

-Ga2 O3 thin lm, in addition to its cost-eective benet, our
proposed technique is also expected to entail considerable
ease in the growth of the
-Ga2 O3 lm. The resultant lm
grown can readily be adapted into the fabrication of GaN
Schottky barrier PDs as a cap layer. The evaluations and
subsequent discussion of the physical, electrical, and optical
properties of the PDs can now proceed once the device
fabrication is completed.
Samples used in this study were all grown on 2-in. (0001)
sapphire substrates by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The structure consists of a 30-nm-thick lowtemperature GaN nucleation layer, a 2-m-thick Si-doped
GaN buer layer, and a 700-nm-thick undoped GaN layer.
First, the GaN/sapphire template was dipped in a diluted

E-mail address: rwchuang@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Fig. 1.

Schematic diagram of the fabricated PDs.

hydrochloric acid water solution (HCl:H2 O) for 4 min to

remove the native oxide. The sample was subsequently
oxidized in a quartz tube furnace purged with 50 sccm of O2
gas at 1000  C for 12 min. It was found that the thickness of
the oxidized layer was about 100 nm (hereafter referred to as
PD A). The crystal quality of the as-grown samples was then
evaluated using MAC MXP18 X-ray diractometer (XRD).
To fabricate
-Ga2 O3 /GaN Schottky-barrier PDs, an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etcher was used to dene the
circular pattern of the device. Standard photolithography and
lifto were then utilized to dene the contact electrodes. The
Ti/Al (30/100 nm) outer ring surrounding the circular diode
pattern with an inner diameter of 500 m was deposited
afterward. To serve as ohmic contact, the circular Schottky
barrier PDs were annealed at 600  C for 5 min. We then
deposited a Ni/Au (5/5 nm thick) Schottky contact inside
the ring opening to serve as the semi-transparent Schottky
barrier contact. The diameter of a semi-transparent Schottky
barrier electrode was designed to be 490 m. Additional
Ni/Au (50/100 nm thick) was then deposited directly on top
of Ni/Au (5/5 nm) to serve as the Schottky electrode contact
pad. Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the fabricated
PDs. Samples without the
-Ga2 O3 cap layer were also
prepared for comparison (hereafter referred to as PD B).
Figure 2 shows the measured XRD spectrum of the
furnace-oxidized sample. The sharp peaks in the spectrum




are identied as (104),
(202),
(111), (113),
(213),
(302), and

(217), which can be indexed as
-Ga2 O3 (JCPDS le 110370). The presence of these peaks shows that the thin

oxidized
-Ga2 O3 lm has lattice constants of a 5:80 A,


b 3:04 A, and c 12:23 A. Figure 3 shows the room-temperature (RT) currentvoltage (IV ) characteristics of the

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# 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Appl. Phys. Express 5 (2012) 116701

Z.-D. Huang et al.

Responsivity (A/W)

Intensity (arb. unit)

10

(104)
(202)

(217)

(302)

(111)
(113)

(213)

10

-1

10

40

50
2(deg)

60

70

10

10-2
10-3
10-4

-1

-2
-3
-4
Applied bias (V)

-5

10

10-3

PD_B:-1V
PD_B :-5V
PD_A :-1V
PD_A :-5V

Fig. 4. RT spectral responses measured from PD A with
-Ga2 O3 cap

layer and PD B without
-Ga2 O3 cap layer. The inset depict the curves of
the responsivity versus applied bias.

Current (mA)

100

10-5

50

-50

10-7

-100
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Applied bias (V)

10-9

PD_B
PD_A

10-11
-8

-6 -4 -2
0
Applied bias (V)

2
2

Forward current (mA)

Reverse current (A)

-1

10

10

10-13
-10

PD_A
PD_B

100

280 300 320 340 360 380 400 420 440 460
Wavelength (nm)

Fig. 2. XRD spectrum of the furnace-oxidized sample.

-3

101

-2

10-4

30

Responsivity (A/W)

-Ga2O3(JCPDS File No. 11-0370)

Fig. 3. RT IV characteristics of the two fabricated PDs (PD A and

PD B) measured in dark as a direct comparison. The inset shows the RT
IV characteristics associated with n-type contact pad measured in dark.

two fabricated PDs evaluated in the dark. The inset depicts

the RT IV characteristic associated with n-type contact pad
measured in dark, showing that this n-type contact is indeed
ohmic. Notice also that the measured current is larger than
100 mA, which is beyond the detection limit when the
applied bias is over 3 V. Under reverse bias, the measured
dark current of PD A is signicantly smaller than that of
PD B. With 10 V applied bias, it was found that the
measured reverse leakage currents of PD A and PD B were
8:54  1012 and 2:13  107 A, respectively. A signicant
reduction in dark current is beneted by a thicker and higher
potential barrier incurred by the semi-insulating
-Ga2 O3
cap layer when compared with a conventional Schottky
barrier PD (PD B). Under a forward bias, the turn-on voltage
of PD A is larger than that of PD B. The higher turn-on
voltage of PD A is attributed to the higher series resistance
and potential barrier encountered by the carriers as result
of incorporating the semi-insulating
-Ga2 O3 cap layer.
Figure 4 show the spectral responses of PD A and PD B
using a 300 W Xe lamp which is spectrally dispersed by a
monochromator as the excitation source. During these measurements, the monochromatic light which has been previously calibrated by a UV-enhanced Si diode along with
an optical power meter is subsequently modulated by a
mechanical chopper and collimated thereafter onto the front-

side (a side associated with Ni/Au metal) of the devices

using an optical ber. The photocurrent is then recorded by
a lock-in amplier. Notice that the photoresponses of the
photodetectors are at in the short-wavelength region, while
a sharp cuto occurs at 360 nm, which are typically observed from both GaN-based PDs. Additionally, notice that
from Fig. 4 a similarity in responsivity between PD A and
PD B at wavelengths longer than 400 nm and a lower dark
current for PD A are observed. One possible explanation for
these observations could be due to a fact that any wavelength
longer than 400 nm is not eective absorbed by GaN layer,
thereby rendering both PD A and PD B to manifest a similar
photoresponsive behavior at wavelengths longer than
400 nm. In the short-wavelength region, it is found that the
responsivity measured from PD A is larger than that measured from PD B. The larger responsivity is attributed to the
eective passivation of surface states by the semi-insulating

-Ga2 O3 cap layer. Note that the width of the transition
region observed from PD A is comparably narrower than
that from PD B, which is due to a much larger bandgap
associated with
-Ga2 O3 , causing the trap states in the

-Ga2 O3 cap layer to be relatively far away separated from
the 360 nm spectral region. Consequently, a narrower transition region is achieved for PD A. With an incident light
wavelength of 360 nm and 1 V bias applied, the measured
responsivities of PD A and PD B are 1:47  102 and
6:72  104 A/W, respectively. With 5 V bias applied,
the measured responsivities of PD A and PD B are both
elevated to 3 and 1:96  101 A/W, respectively. It is clear
that the responsivity increases in response to an applied
bias as shown in the inset, which implicitly indicates the
existence of the photoconductive gain in both PDs.19) It
was shown previously that photoconductive gain could
be induced by surface states.20) In fact, it needs to be
emphasized at this point that some deep level defects are
existed within the GaN layer. When the wavelength of the
incident light is longer than 360 nm, the photocurrent is
inevitably produced, which is believably caused by electrons
jumping from a defect level into conduction band. Here, the
UV-to-visible rejection ratio is dened as the responsivity
measured at 360 nm divided by the same quantity measured
at 450 nm. With such a denition in place, it is found that the

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# 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Appl. Phys. Express 5 (2012) 116701

Z.-D. Huang et al.

Noise power density (A /Hz)

-23

10

10-25 1/f fitting

PD_B

10-27
10-29
1/f fitting

PD_A

-31

10

Biased at -5 V

10
100
Frequency (Hz)

1000

Fig. 5. Noise power spectra measured associated with the two fabricated
PDs (PD A and PD B).

UV-to-visible rejection ratios for both PD A and PD B

biased at 5 V are 437 and 21, respectively. In contrast to
PD B, a larger UV-to-visible rejection ratio is observed from
PD A, which is attributed to the eective suppression of
dark leakage current as result of inserting a
-Ga2 O3 cap
layer. Figure 5 shows noise power spectra measured from
these two PDs in the frequency range varied from 1 Hz to
1 kHz. The solid lines shown in the gure refer to the
experimental data, while the dashed lines are the corresponding 1=f ttings. Under the same applied bias and
frequency, it is found that the noise power of PD A is
signicantly lower than that of PD B due to a lower dark
current measured from PD A with the
-Ga2 O3 cap layer
incorporated. For a given bandwidth B, the total square noise
current hin i2 can be estimated by integrating the noise
spectral density Sn f over the frequency range,21)
ZB
Z1
ZB
2
hin i
Sn f df
Sn f df
Sn f df
0

S0 ln B 1;
1
where Sn f in the bandwidth range of 0 to 1 Hz is assumed
to be the same and equal to Sn f at 1 Hz. From the data
shown in Fig. 4 and eq. (1), the total square noise currents
hin i2 can then be determined as 1:73  1028 and 4:63 
1023 A2 for PD A and PD B, respectively. The total square
noise current hin i2 measured from PD A is about 5 orders of
magnitude smaller than that from PD B due to an eective
passivation of the sample surface as result of incorporating
a semi-insulating
-Ga2 O3 cap layer. The noise equivalent
power (NEP) and the normalized detectivity (D
) can then
be evaluated using,
p
hin i2
;
2
NEP
Rp
p
A B
D

;
3
NEP
where R is the responsivity of the PDs, A is the device size,
and B is the bandwidth. Knowing the device size, we can
thus calculate NEPs and D
for a given bandwidth of 1 kHz.
It is found that NEP calculated are 4:38  1015 and 3:47 
1011 W for PD A and PD B, respectively, while the
corresponding D
values are 1:01  1013 and 1:28  109
cm Hz0:5 W1 . These ndings indicate that a lower noise level

and a larger detectivity can be realized by introducing an

additional
-Ga2 O3 cap layer. With the semi-insulating
Ga2 O3 cap layer inserted, a substantial reduction in the
reverse leakage current can be achieved as a result of introducing a relatively higher potential barrier, thereby bringing a
signicant improvement to the PD performance accordingly.
In summary, GaN Schottky barrier UV PDs with a

-Ga2 O3 cap layer grown by furnace oxidizing the GaN
epitaxial layer were fabricated and characterized. By this
oxidation technique introduced to form a
-Ga2 O3 cap layer,
a signicant reduction of the dark leakage current and an
enhancement of the UV-to-visible rejection ratio can be duly
achieved. The impacts of growing an additional cap layer
eectively demonstrate that the measured NEPs and D

values for PDs with and without the
-Ga2 O3 cap are 4:38 
1015 and 3:47  1011 W and 1:01  1013 and 1:28  109
cm Hz0:5 W1 , respectively.
Acknowledgments This work was nancially supported in part by the
National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan under Contract Number NSC 982221-E-006-015-MY3. Furthermore, the authors would like to acknowledge the
use of shared facilities funded by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan under the
Program of Top 100 Universities Advancement. The additional nancial support
provided by the Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Aairs of Taiwan, is
greatly appreciated. Finally, the authors also wish to thank the LED Lighting and
Research Center and Ocean Energy Research Center of NCKU for assistance in
relevant devices analyses.

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# 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics