In this work, high-stability 4H-SiC avalanche photodiodes (APDs) for ultraviolet (UV) detection at high temperatures are fabricated and investigated. With the temperature increasing from room temperature to 150°C, a very small temperature coefficient of 7.4 mV/°C is achieved for the avalanche breakdown voltage of devices. For the first time, the stability of 4H-SiC APDs is verified based on an accelerated aging test with harsh stress conditions. Three different stress conditions are selected with the temperatures and reverse currents of 175°C/100 µA, 200°C/100 µA, and 200°C/500 µA, respectively. The results show that our 4H-SiC APD exhibits robust high-temperature performance and can even endure more than 120 hours at the harsh aging condition of 200°C/500 µA, which indicates that 4H-SiC APDs are very stable and reliable for applications at high temperatures.

Ga₂O₃ metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) with high-breakdown characteristics were fabricated on a homoepitaxial n-typed β-Ga₂O₃ film, which was grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on an Fe-doped semi-insulating (010) Ga₂O₃ substrate. The structure consisted of a 400 nm unintentionally doped (UID) Ga₂O₃ buffer layer and an 80 nm Si-doped channel layer. A high k HfO₂ gate dielectric film formed by atomic layer deposition was employed to reduce the gate leakage. Moreover, a source-connected field plate was introduced to enhance the breakdown characteristics. The drain saturation current density of the fabricated device reached 101 mA/mm at V_gs of 3 V. The off-state current was as low as 7.1 × 10^-11 A/mm, and the drain current I_ON/I_OFF ratio reached 10⁹. The transistors exhibited three-terminal off-state breakdown voltages of 450 and 550 V, corresponding to gate-to-drain spacing of 4 and 8 μm, respectively.

Ultraviolet (UV) detectors with large photosensitive areas are more advantageous in low-level UV detection applications. In this Letter, high-performance 4H-SiC p-i-n avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with large active area (800 μm diameter) are reported. With the optimized epitaxial structure and device fabrication process, a high multiplication gain of 1.4 × 10⁶ is obtained for the devices at room temperature, and the dark current is as low as ～10 pA at low reverse voltages. In addition, record external quantum efficiency of 85.5% at 274 nm is achieved, which is the highest value for the reported SiC APDs. Furthermore, the rejection ratio of UV to visible light reaches about 10⁴. The excellent performance of our devices indicates a tremendous improvement for large-area SiC APD-based UV detectors. Finally, the UV imaging performance of our fabricated 4H-SiC p-i-n APDs is also demonstrated for system-level applications.

In this Letter, we report large-area (600 μm diameter) 4H-SiC avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with high gain and low dark current for visible-blind ultraviolet detection. Based on the separate absorption and multiplication structure, 4H-SiC APDs passivated with SiNx instead of SiO2 are demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Benefitting from the SiNx passivation, the surface leakage current is effectively suppressed. At room temperature, high multiplication gain of 6.5×105 and low dark current density of 0.88 μA/cm2 at the gain of 1000 are achieved for our devices, which are comparable to the previously reported small-area SiC APDs.

Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) of phase-separated InGaN quantum wells is investigated over a broader excitation power range. With increasing excitation power from 0.5 μW to 50 mW, the In-rich quasi-quantum dot (QD)-related PL peak disappears at about 3 mW, while temperature behavior of the InGaN matrix-related PL peak energy (linewidth) gradually evolves from a strong “S-shaped” (“W-shaped”) temperature dependence into a weak “S-shaped” (an approximately “V-shaped”), until becoming an inverted “V-shaped” (a monotonically increasing) temperature dependence. This indicates that, with increasing excitation power, the carrier localization effect is gradually reduced and the QD-related transition is submerged by the significantly enhanced InGaN matrix-related transition, while the carrier thermalization effect gradually increases to become predominant at high excitation powers.