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.