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The pursuit of low power consumption, high charge collection efficiency (CCE), and high energy resolution is critical for the development of high performance GaN-based alpha-particle detectors. In this letter, we fabricated a low-voltage p-i-n GaN-based alpha-particle detector with superior energy resolution. The detector exhibits a very low leakage current of pA level even at −100 V and high CCEs of 31% and 92% at zero bias and reverse bias of 50 V, respectively. Meanwhile, the detector demonstrates a high energy resolution of 2.48% at −20 V. These excellent performances are attributed to the artificially enlarged path of alpha particles in the depletion region by employing the angular incidence measurement method and the high crystal quality of the epitaxial film grown on a single-crystal GaN substrate. In addition, the damage events caused by the alpha particles are also investigated using the Monte Carlo calculation. These results are anticipated to promote the research of radiation-hardened GaN-based detectors.

Single-photon emitters based on intrinsic defects in silicon carbide (SiC) are promising as solid-state qubits for the quantum information storage, whereas defect engineering in a controllable manner still remains challenging. Herein, the thermally-driven defect dynamic reaction in the ion implanted 4H-SiC has been exploited through the optical emission spectra of defects. For the heavy-ion (Si or Ar) implanted samples with abundant Frenkel pairs, the silicon vacancies (VSi) are energetically converted into the carbon antisite-vacancy pair (CSi-VC) upon annealing till 1300 °C for 30 min, accompanied with the gradual lattice recovery and local strain relaxation. The further temperature elevation dissociates the metastable CSi-VC into carbon antisite (CSi) and carbon vacancy (VC), as supported by the consequent quenching of the (CSi-VC)-related emission at 700 nm. Thus, the whole defect reaction is probed as the vacancy interconversion from VSi to VC with the byproduct of stacking faults. In contrast, the intermediate CSi-VC complexes are not energetically favorable during the annealing of the H-implanted sample, which results from the negligible generation of Frenkel pairs, as supported by the x-ray diffraction patterns and Raman scattering analysis. These findings provide guidance for defect engineering in SiC toward the creation of reliable single photon emitters.

Overvoltage ruggedness is an essential reliability requirement for non-avalanche AlGaN/GaN power devices against inductive transient spikes in the OFF-state breakdown events. In this work, we first report the 3rd-quadrant (i.e. source-to-drain reverse operation) overvoltage ruggedness of the p-gate GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) by performing static current–voltage (I–V) sweeps and dynamic unclamped inductive switching (UIS) experiments. Both experimental results reveal an inferior breakdown performance of the device under 3rd-quadrant blocking conditions, including a low static voltage of 57 V and a dynamic breakdown voltage (BV) of 155 V. In particular, this transient voltage is evidently degraded from 155 V to 114 V (i.e. a 26% reduction) by increasing the load current, which is significantly different from the stable BV (1.4 kV) achieved in the 1st-quadrant dynamic breakdown. Such unusual degradation behavior can be explained by the trapping-related carrier transport mechanism, which is supported by temperature-dependent breakdown characteristics. Further numerical simulations, de-capsulation failure analyses and repeated UIS experiments are carried out to study the failure mechanism and gain insight into the overvoltage capability of the device. These results suggest that the rational design of the p-gate GaN HEMTs with the desired 3rd-quadrant overvoltage ruggedness requires careful consideration, especially in reverse conduction events.

To explore the potential of semi-insulating (SI) SiC substrate for radiation detector applications, p-i-n diodes with thick depletion layers are fabricated by using a dual-face ion implantation technique on SI 4H-SiC substrate. The Poole-Frenkel (P-F) emission is found responsible for the reverse leakage current transport of the p-i-n diode at elevated temperatures. The derived emission barrier height is likely induced by the residual boron-related shallow-level states, which are located ∼ 0.3 eV above the top of the valence band. Detection tests of α-particles are performed on each side of the p-i-n detector to determine the location of the depleted region, which reveals weak p-type conduction of the SI 4H-SiC substrate after high temperature post-implantation annealing. The energy resolution of the detector operating in photovoltaic mode is ∼ 4.3%, which would degrade at higher biases. The saturated charge collection efficiency (CCE) of ∼ 99% for detection of 5.48 MeV α-particles is obtained as reverse bias exceeds 80 V.