High responsivity graphene-InGaAs near-infrared photodetector realized by hole trapping and its response saturation mechanism

Abstract

Graphene is an ideal material for wide spectrum detector owing to its special band structure, but its low light absorption and fast composite of photogenerated carriers lead to a weak response performance. In this paper, we designed a unique photoconductive graphene-InGaAs photodetector. The built-in electric field was formed between graphene and InGaAs, which can prolong the lifetime of photogenerated carriers and improve the response of devices by confining the holes. Compared with graphene-Si structure, a higher built-in electric field and reach to 0.54 eV is formed. It enables the device to achieve a responsivity of 60 AW −1 and a photoconductive gain of 79.4 at 792 nm. In the 1550 nm communication band, the responsivity of the device is also greater than 10 AW −1 and response speed is less than 2 ms. Meanwhile, the saturation phenomenon of light response was also found in this photoconductive graphene heterojunction detector during the experiment, we have explained the phenomenon by the capacitance theory of the built-in electric field, and the maximum optical responsivity of the detector is calculated theoretically, which is in good agreement with the measurement result.