Impact of Interface States and Bulk Carrier Lifetime on Photocapacitance of Metal/Insulator/GaN Structure for Ultraviolet Light Detection

Abstract

The influence of interface state density and bulk carrier lifetime on the dependencies of photocapacitance versus wide range of gate bias (-0.1 to -3 V) and light intensity (109 to 1020 photon cm-2 s-1) was studied for metal/insulator/n-GaN UV light photodetector by means of numerical simulations. The light detection limit and photocapacitance saturation were analyzed in terms of the interface charge and interface Fermi level for electrons and holes and effective interface recombination velocity. It was proven that the excess carrier recombination through interface states is the main reason of photocapacitance signal quenching. It was found that the photodetector can work in various modes (on–off or quantitative light measurement) adjusted by the gate bias. A comparison between experimental data and theoretical capacitance-light intensity characteristics was made. A new method for the determination of the interface state density distribution from capacitance–voltage-light intensity measurements was also proposed.