Characteristics of heat-annealed silicon homojunction infrared photodetector fabricated by plasma-assisted technique

Abstract

In this work, the effect of thermal annealing on the characteristics of silicon homojunction photodetector was studied. This homojunction photodetector was fabricated by means of plasma-induced etching of p-type silicon substrate and plasma sputtering of n-type silicon target in vacuum. The electrical and spectral characteristics of this photodetector were determined and optimized before and after the annealing process. The maximum surface reflectance of 1.89% and 1.81%, the maximum responsivity of 0.495 A/W and 0.55 A/W, the ideality factor of 1.80 and 1.99, the maximum external quantum efficiency of 76% and 83.5%, and the built-in potential of 0.79 V and 0.72 V were obtained before and after annealing, respectively.