Silicon Carbide UV Photodiode Arrays

UV diode detector arrays have a wide range of both commercial and military applications. Examples include spectral measurement and calibration, pollution monitoring, environmental change monitoring, remote sensing of earth resources, solar UV monitoring, burner monitoring in gas turbines, flame detection in furnaces and for fire detections, etc. SiC is one of the most promising material for UV diode arrays. SiC is sensitive to UV radiation over the 200-400nm range and, because of its large bandgap, is blind to visible and simplifies the use of UV detectors compared to silicon or III-V compounds because there is no interference from other wavelength ranges. The use of SiC also permits on-chip integration of electronics and LEDs as well as the detectors. In Phase I, we will demonstrate the feasibility of SiC UV detectors by fabricating a linear array of p-n junction UV detectors. The diodes will be characterized to determine their sensitivity, frequency response, linearity of response. In Phase II, we will examine integration of the detector arrays with on-chip electronics for additional detetor functionality such as detector multiplexing, frequency response correction and self-calibration.