Inclination of screw dislocations on the performance of homoepitaxial GaN based UV photodetectors

Highlights: • Dislocation-assisted charge-carrier transport & effective photocurrent generation. • Increment in the dark current is triggered by the existence of screw dislocations. • A direct correlation between screw dislocation density & device performance. • Results implicate persistent photoconductivity upon turning-OFF Laser source. • Fall in dislocation density will effectively enrich optoelectronic properties. We analyze the dislocation-assisted charge carrier transport and effective photocurrent generation in the photodetection devices. Specifically, the impact of screw dislocations on the performance of GaN based metal–semiconductor-metal ultraviolet photodetector is investigated. The experiments reveal that reducing screw dislocations had a strong impact on dark current (~3x decrement) of the devices as well as on the photo-generated current (~20x enhancement) upon illumination (ultraviolet, 325 nm). The responsivity of the photodetection device has been increased from 85.05 mA/W to 130.17 mA/W with decreasing dislocation density. Because, higher dislocations created leakage paths that develop trap states which enhances the possibility of recombination process of photo-generated electron-hole pairs leading to lower charge collection. Further, the external quantum efficiency increases from 32.51% to 49.76% by reducing dislocation density. The work in this study proposes that reduction of defects/dislocations will be an effective approach to enrich the III-nitride semiconductor system for advancement in optoelectronic devices.