Scalable manufacture of vertical p‐GaN/n‐SnO2 heterostructure for self‐powered ultraviolet photodetector, solar cell and dual‐color light emitting diode

Abstract

Abstract Vertical SnO2 based p‐n junctions are pivotal since they built the core components in photoelectronic systems. Nevertheless, preparation of high‐quality p‐SnO2 with controllable hole mobility and concentration is still a great challenge owing to the self‐compensating effect and lattice distortion caused by the radius discrepancy between host and doped atoms. Herein, p type GaN:Mg grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition is employed as hole transportation layer to construct p‐n heterojunction with intrinsic n‐SnO2 prepared by atomic layer deposition. Both material preparation techniques are compatible with current industrial mass production processes. The p‐GaN/n‐SnO2 heterojunction can be developed as solar cell, dual‐color light emitting diode and self‐powered, high speed ultraviolet (UV) photodetector with external quantum efficiency of 74% at 0 V bias voltage. In addition, direct recombination of donor bound excitons (D0X) and UV emission red shifts caused by quantum confinement Stack effect are observed in SnO2. Since our device fabrication technique is a standard craft in photoelectronics, the study of p‐GaN/n‐SnO2 heterojunction suggests a simple and effective strategy for large scale device integration in next generation high performance photoelectronic devices.

Keywords

• heterostructure
• light emitting diode
• self‐powered
• solar cell
• UV photodetector