Surface-Field-Enhanced Detection of Deep UV Photons in Silicon Carbide Avalanche Photodetectors

While silicon carbide (SiC) is an ideal material for building ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors, the absorbed photons get recombined in the first few nanometers at the surface due to a large absorption coefficient in the 200- to 250-nm wavelength band. This leads to a significantly reduced quantum efficiency near 200 nm. The goal of this work is to design a structure that would increase the responsivity of SiC avalanche photodetectors (APDs) near the 200-nm wavelength.