Antireflective GaN Nanoridge Texturing by Metal-Assisted Chemical Etching via a Thermally Dewetted Pt Catalyst Network for Highly Responsive Ultraviolet Photodiodes

Antireflective (AR) surface texturing is a feasible way to boost the light absorption of photosensitive materials and devices. As a plasma-free etching method, metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) has been employed for fabricating GaN AR surface texturing. However, the poor etching efficiency of typical MacEtch hinders the demonstration of highly responsive photodetectors on an undoped GaN wafer. In addition, GaN MacEtch requires metal mask patterning by lithography, which leads to a huge processing complexity when the dimension of GaN AR nanostructure scales down to the submicron range. In this work, we have developed a facile texturing method of forming a GaN nanoridge surface on an undoped GaN thin film by a lithography-free submicron mask-patterning process via thermal dewetting of platinum. The nanoridge surface texturing effectively reduces the surface reflection in the ultraviolet (UV) regime, which can be translated to a 6-fold enhancement in responsivity (i.e., 115 A/W) of the photodiode at 365 nm. The results demonstrated in this work show that MacEtch can offer a viable route for enhanced UV light-matter interaction and surface engineering in GaN UV optoelectronic devices.

Automated summary

Metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) can create GaN nanoridge surfaces on undoped GaN thin films, reducing surface reflection in the UV regime and enhancing photodiode responsivity by 6 times.