Novel Silicon Carbide Deep Ultraviolet Detectors: Device Modeling, Characterization, Design and Prototyping

Silicon Carbide deep UV detectors can achieve large gains, high signal-to-noise ratios and solar-blind operation, with added benefits of smaller sizes, lower operating voltages, radiation hardness, ruggedness and scalability. The design, fabrication and optimization of SiC UV APDs is challenging due to some material defects, relatively not-well modeled device operation, and very high absorption coefficients near 100nm wavelengths. These challenges can be overcome with detailed co-modeling, characterization, design and fabrication. Successfully operating SiC UV detectors are of utmost importance for astronomy, space exploration, upper atmosphere monitoring, and systems such as Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) communication.Through Phase I and Phase II, we propose to develop Silicon Carbide (SiC) based UV detectors for space applications. The initial target is the 100nm to 300nm wavelength range, with the peak responsivity expected to be within the 200nm-300nm interval. For the 100nm-200nm wavelength range, we will experiment with the use of an AlGaN cap-layer as the absorber and SiC as the multiplier. Phase I effort will focus on the design and detailed physics based simulation of these SiC APD structures. We will use SiC UV detectors fabricated by the GE Global Research Center and AlGaN APDs from Universityof Maryland for measurements and calibration.