Suitability of applying ultrathin SOI‐based PIN diodes to photodetection of UV wavelength

Abstract

Abstract This work intends to investigate the impact of silicon layer thickness and substrate biasing on the UV photodetection efficiency of PIN diodes fabricated with ultra‐thin body and buried oxide (UTBB silicon‐on‐insulator [SOI]) technology, aiming to verify their behaviour on an ultimate commercial technology. UV photodetectors are applied in different fields, such as environmental and biomedical ones, and their implementation in UTBB SOI could enable the design of mixed circuits where data acquisition and processing could be made in the same chip, enhancing systems’ performance. It is shown that a 20‐nm‐thick silicon layer can be applied for UV photodetection and enhanced generated current is obtained when substrate bias is set to guarantee a depletion regime in the entire active layer.

Keywords

• diodes
• photodetectors
• silicon‐on‐insulator