Overview of the structural effects on the performance of AlGaN solar-blind UV detectors

Abstract

In recent years, ultraviolet detectors are gradually used in industry, commerce, military, firefighting etc. so they are appealing to the scientific community for further explorations in this emerging field of optoelectronics. AlGaN, with its adjustable band gap, extraordinary carrier mobility, good thermal conductivity, and superior chemical and physical stability has been widely used by researchers in the past two decades. Despite significant advancements in AlGaN-based UV detectors, several challenges and unsolved issues hinder their widespread commercialization and performance optimization. The fabrication complexity and high production costs of AlGaN-based detectors remain major challenges, primarily due to the need for specialized substrates like bulk AlN. These materials significantly increase manufacturing expenses, limiting large-scale production. Additionally, AlGaN-based UV detectors face challenges in doping control, response time, noise characteristics, and integration with existing semiconductor technologies. In this review, a comprehensive introduction of the research direction is followed by the different parameters to study the photodetector performance and after this different structures such as MIS, PIN, avalanche and schottky are reviewed for the photodetector performance. Moreover a review of self-powered solar-blind UV detectors are also presented followed by the challenges and unsolved issues in AlGaN-based UV detectors. This review will circumvent the development in field of AlGaN based solar-blind UV detectors in different structures and will also highlight the problems that still need to be solved in recent years.