Fabrication of GaN nano-towers based self-powered UV photodetector

Abstract The fabrication of unique taper-ended GaN-Nanotowers structure based highly efficient ultraviolet photodetector is demonstrated. Hexagonally stacked, single crystalline GaN nanocolumnar structure (nanotowers) grown on AlN buffer layer exhibits higher photocurrent generation due to high quality nanotowers morphology and increased surface/volume ratio which significantly enhances its responsivity upon ultraviolet exposure leading to outstanding performance from the developed detection device. The fabricated detector display low dark current (~ 12 nA), high ILight/IDark ratio (> 104), fast time-correlated transient response (~ 433 µs) upon ultraviolet (325 nm) illumination. A high photoresponsivity of 2.47 A/W is achieved in self-powered mode of operation. The reason behind such high performance could be attributed to built-in electric field developed from a difference in Schottky barrier heights will be discussed in detail. While in photoconductive mode, the responsivity is observed to be 35.4 A/W @ − 3 V along with very high external quantum efficiency (~ 104%), lower noise equivalent power (~ 10–13 WHz−1/2) and excellent UV–Vis selectivity. Nanotower structure with lower strain and dislocations as well as reduced trap states cumulatively contributed to augmented performance from the device. The utilization of these GaN-Nanotower structures can potentially be useful towards the fabrication of energy-efficient ultraviolet photodetectors.