Wafer-scale aluminium nitride nanostructures for solar-blind ultra-violet detection

Ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor aluminum nitride (AlN) detectors have attracted much attention in recent years. As a next-generation semiconductor material, AlN crystals have shown advantages in many fields, attracting several teams to investigate preparation methods to prepare high-quality crystals. In this paper, Solar-blind photodetectors (SBPDs) based on metal-semiconductor-metal single-crystal AlN films were prepared by nitriding on c-plane sapphire using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The prepared AlN SBPDs showed a responsivity of 11 mA/W, a fast-rising and falling response time, and a detective of 2.53 × 10¹¹ Jones. Nitriding through sapphire is a cost-effective way to grow AlN at high temperatures and can grow wafer-scale AlN, demonstrating the advantages of AlN growth.