Optically Controlled Silicon MESFET Modeling Considering Diffusion Process

Abstract

An analytical model is proposed for an optically controlled Metal Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MESFET), known as Optical Field Effect Transistor (OPFET) considering the diffusion fabrication process. The electrical parameters such as threshold voltage, drain-source current, gate capacitances and switching response have been determined for the dark and various illuminated conditions. The Photovoltaic effect due to photogenerated carriers under illumination is shown to modulate the channel cross-section, which in turn significantly changes the threshold voltage, drainsource current, the gate capacitances and the device switching speed. The threshold voltage VT is reduced under optical illumination condition, which leads the device to change the device property from enhancement mode to depletion mode depending on photon impurity flux density. The resulting I-V characteristics show that the drain-source current IDS for different gate-source voltage Vgs is significantly increased with optical illumination for photon flux densities of Φ = 10 15 and 10 17 /㎠s compared to the dark condition. Further more, the drain-source current as a function of drain-source voltage VDS is evaluated to find the I-V characteristics for various pinch-off voltages V P for optimization of impurity flux density QDiff by diffusion process. The resulting I-V characteristics also show that the diffusion process introduces less process-induced damage compared to ion implantation, which suffers from current reduction due to a large number of defects introduced by the ion implantation process. Further the results show significant increase in gate-source capacitance C gs and gate-drain capacitance C gd for optical illuminations, where the photo-induced voltage has a significant role on gate capacitances. The switching time τ of the OPFET device is computed for dark and illumination conditions. The switching time τ is greatly reduced by optical illumination and is also a function of device active layer thickness and corresponding impurity flux density Q Diff . Thus it is shown that the diffusion process shows great potential for improvement of optoelectronic devices in quantum efficiency and other performance areas.