High performances III-Nitride Quantum Dot infrared photodetector operating at room temperature

In this paper we present a novel long wave length infrared quantum dot photodetector. A cubic shaped 6nm GaN quantum dot (QD) within a large 18 nm Al(0.2)Ga(0.8)N QD (capping layer) embedded in Al(0.8)Ga(0.2)N has been considered as the unit cell of the active layer of the device. Single band effective mass approximation has been applied in order to calculate the QD electronic structure. The temperature dependent behavior of the responsivity and dark current were presented and discussed for different applied electric fields. The capping layer has been proposed to improve upon the dark current of the detector. The proposed device has demonstrated exceptionally low dark current, therefore low noise, and high detectivity. Excellent specific detectivity (D*) up to approximately 3 x 10(8)CmHz(1/ 2)/W is achieved at room temperature.