Self-Biased (p⁺)Diamond/(n)4H-SiC Vertical Schottky Diodes for UV Detection

We present a groundbreaking advancement in ultraviolet (UV) radiation detection technology through the fabrication of a novel (p+)BDD/(n)4H-SiC heterojunction Schottky barrier diode (HSBD). This innovative device incorporates a thin, transparent nanocrystalline p+ boron-doped diamond (BDD) layer deposited on highly crystalline, low-defect n-type 4H-SiC epitaxial layers. The HSBDs demonstrated a responsivity of 0.01 A/W at zero applied bias (self-biased mode) which is one order of magnitude higher than that reported in metal/4H-SiC SBDs. Furthermore, the highly conductive BDD contacts facilitate the extraction of radiation-induced electron-hole charge pairs generated within the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$150~\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> m thick 4H-SiC epitaxial layers, which serve as the active detector volume. This disruptive detector technology offers immense potential for applications in nuclear reactor core dose monitoring and space radiation detection, surpassing the capabilities of current detector technologies. Additionally, this advancement has significant implications for the manipulation of the charge state of optically active defects in 4H-SiC, laying the foundation for future developments in quantum computation qubits.