Pyroelectric Photoconductive Diode for Highly Sensitive and Fast DUV Detection.

Detecting high-energy photons from the deep ultraviolet (DUV) to X-rays is vital in security, medicine, industry, and science. Wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors exhibit great potential for detecting high-energy photons. However, the implementation of highly sensitive and high-speed detectors based on WBG semiconductors has been a huge challenge due to the inevitable deep level traps and the lack of appropriate device structure engineering. Here, a sensitive and fast pyroelectric photoconductive diode (PPD), which couples the interface pyroelectric effect with the photoconductive effect based on tailored polycrystal Ga-rich GaOx (PGR-GaOx) Schottky photodiode, is first proposed. The PPD device exhibits ultrahigh detection performance for DUV and X-ray light. The responsivity for DUV light and sensitivity for X-ray are up to 104 A W-1 and 105 µC Gyair -1 cm-2, respectively. Especially, the interface pyroelectric effect induced by polar symmetry in the depletion region of the PGR-GaOx can significantly improve the response speed of the device by 105 times. Furthermore, the potential of the device is demonstrated for imaging enhancement systems with low power consumption and high sensitivity. This work fully excavates the potential of the pyroelectric effect for detectors and provides a novel design strategy to achieve sensitive and high-speed detectors.

Epitaxial Growth of Large-Scale 2D CrTe2 Films on Amorphous Silicon Wafers With Low Thermal Budget.

2D van der Waals (vdW) magnets open landmark horizons in the development of innovative spintronic device architectures. However, their fabrication with large scale poses challenges due to high synthesis temperatures (>500 °C) and difficulties in integrating them with standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology on amorphous substrates such as silicon oxide (SiO2 ) and silicon nitride (SiNx ). Here, a seeded growth technique for crystallizing CrTe2 films on amorphous SiNx /Si and SiO2 /Si substrates with a low thermal budget is presented. This fabrication process optimizes large-scale, granular atomic layers on amorphous substrates, yielding a substantial coercivity of 11.5 kilo-oersted, attributed to weak intergranular exchange coupling. Field-driven Néel-type stripe domain dynamics explain the amplified coercivity. Moreover, the granular CrTe2 devices on Si wafers display significantly enhanced magnetoresistance, more than doubling that of single-crystalline counterparts. Current-assisted magnetization switching, enabled by a substantial spin-orbit torque with a large spin Hall angle (85) and spin Hall conductivity (1.02 × 107 ℏ/2e Ω⁻¹ m⁻¹), is also demonstrated. These observations underscore the proficiency in manipulating crystallinity within integrated 2D magnetic films on Si wafers, paving the way for large-scale batch manufacturing of practical magnetoelectronic and spintronic devices, heralding a new era of technological innovation.

Magnetically tunable diffractive optical elements based on ion-irradiated ultrathin ferromagnetic stacks.

We report a novel type of magnetically tunable diffractive optical element (DOE) based on ultrathin ferromagnetic (FM) Pt/Co stacks. The Pt/Co stacks are irradiated by Ar+ ions at selected areas so that the perpendicular anisotropy is spatially modulated and the DOEs can be tuned by an external magnetic field through the magnetooptical effect. Based on this concept, a diffraction grating and a Fresnel zone plate (FZP) were developed, and complementary experimental results corroborate that a magnetic field can simultaneously manipulate both the zeroth and the first diffraction orders of these DOEs. Importantly, this effect can be utilized to enhance or hide the image formed by the FZP. Our studies pave the way toward developing compact and high-precision DOEs with fast and robust tunability, facilitating various applications spanning a wide spectrum range.

High Performance of Zero-Power-Consumption MOCVD-Grown ß-Ga2O3-Based Solar-Blind Photodetectors with Ultralow Dark Current and High-Temperature Functionalities.

In this article, we report on high-performance deep ultraviolet photodetectors (DUV PDs) fabricated on metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)-grown ß-Ga2O3 heteroepitaxy that exhibit stable operation up to 125 °C. The fabricated DUV PDs exhibit self-powered behavior with an ultralow dark current of 1.75 fA and a very high photo-to-dark-current ratio (PDCR) of the order of 105 at zero bias and >105 at higher biases of 5 and 10 V, which remains almost constant up to 125 °C. The high responsivity of 6.62 A/W is obtained at 10 V at room temperature (RT) under the weak illumination of 42.86 µW/cm2 of 260 nm wavelength. The detector shows very low noise equivalent power (NEP) of 5.74 × 10-14 and 1.03 × 10-16 W/Hz1/2 and ultrahigh detectivity of 5.51 × 1011 and 3.10 × 1014 Jones at 0 and 5 V, respectively, which shows its high detection sensitivity. The RT UV-visible (260:500 nm) rejection ratios of the order of 103 at zero bias and 105 at 5 V are obtained. These results demonstrate the potential of Ga2O3-based DUV PDs for solar-blind detection applications that require high-temperature robustness.

In-sensor reservoir computing system for latent fingerprint recognition with deep ultraviolet photo-synapses and memristor array.

Detection and recognition of latent fingerprints play crucial roles in identification and security. However, the separation of sensor, memory, and processor in conventional ex-situ fingerprint recognition system seriously deteriorates the latency of decision-making and inevitably increases the overall computing power. In this work, a photoelectronic reservoir computing (RC) system, consisting of DUV photo-synapses and nonvolatile memristor array, is developed to detect and recognize the latent fingerprint with in-sensor and parallel in-memory computing. Through the Ga-rich design, we achieve amorphous GaOx (a-GaOx) photo-synapses with an enhanced persistent photoconductivity (PPC) effect. The PPC effect, which induces nonlinearly tunable conductivity, renders the a-GaOx photo-synapses an ideal deep ultraviolet (DUV) photoelectronic reservoir, thus mapping the complex input vector into a dimensionality-reduced output vector. Connecting the reservoirs and a memristor array, we further construct an in-sensor RC system for latent fingerprint identification. The system maintains over 90% recognition accuracy for latent fingerprint within 15% stochastic noise level via the proposed dual-feature strategy. This work provides a subversive prototype system of DUV in-sensor RC for highly efficient recognition of latent fingerprints.

Observation of polarity-switchable photoconductivity in III-nitride/MoSx core-shell nanowires.

III-V semiconductor nanowires are indispensable building blocks for nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. However, solely relying on their intrinsic physical and material properties sometimes limits device functionalities to meet the increasing demands in versatile and complex electronic world. By leveraging the distinctive nature of the one-dimensional geometry and large surface-to-volume ratio of the nanowires, new properties can be attained through monolithic integration of conventional nanowires with other easy-synthesized functional materials. Herein, we combine high-crystal-quality III-nitride nanowires with amorphous molybdenum sulfides (a-MoSx) to construct III-nitride/a-MoSx core-shell nanostructures. Upon light illumination, such nanostructures exhibit striking spectrally distinctive photodetection characteristic in photoelectrochemical environment, demonstrating a negative photoresponsivity of -100.42 mA W-1 under 254 nm illumination, and a positive photoresponsivity of 29.5 mA W-1 under 365 nm illumination. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the successful surface modification of the nanowires via a-MoSx decoration accelerates the reaction process at the electrolyte/nanowire interface, leading to the generation of opposite photocurrent signals under different photon illumination. Most importantly, such polarity-switchable photoconductivity can be further tuned for multiple wavelength bands photodetection by simply adjusting the surrounding environment and/or tailoring the nanowire composition, showing great promise to build light-wavelength controllable sensing devices in the future.

AlGaN Quantum Disk Nanorods with Efficient UV-B Emission Grown on Si(111) Using Molecular Beam Epitaxy.

AlGaN nanorods have attracted increasing amounts of attention for use in ultraviolet (UV) optoelectronic devices. Here, self-assembled AlGaN nanorods with embedding quantum disks (Qdisks) were grown on Si(111) using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE). The morphology and quantum construction of the nanorods were investigated and well-oriented and nearly defect-free nanorods were shown to have a high density of about 2 × 1010 cm-2. By controlling the substrate temperature and Al/Ga ratio, the emission wavelengths of the nanorods could be adjusted from 276 nm to 330 nm. By optimizing the structures and growth parameters of the Qdisks, a high internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of the AlGaN Qdisk nanorods of up to 77% was obtained at 305 nm, which also exhibited a shift in the small emission wavelength peak with respect to the increasing temperatures during the PL measurements.

Micron channel length ZnO thin film transistors using bilayer electrodes.

Micro light-emitting diodes (Micro-LEDs) are currently attracting more and more attention. Thin film transistors (TFTs) with micron channel lengths can be used to drive Micro-LEDs. The key parameters of TFTs, such as mobility, ION/IOFF and threshold voltage, still need to be improved. In this study, we propose and experimentally demonstrate ZnO TFTs using bilayer electrodes to overcome the short channel effects when the channel length is scaled down to 3 µm. Ti, Mo and Sn interlayers not only serve as diffusion barriers to prohibit migration of Cu atoms from the top electrodes, but also enhance adhesive energy of the metal electrodes on ZnO channel layers. ZnO TFTs using Cu/Ti bilayer electrodes exhibit the best performance, e.g., a high mobility of 45.3 cm2V-1s-1, a high ION/IOFF ratio of 4.28 × 109, a low subthreshold of 0.24 V/dec and a proper threshold voltage of 1.13 V. The high mobility can be attributed to a significant decrease of the barrier height and a slight narrowing of the space charge layer, and the high ratio of ION/IOFF is concerned with the high electron concentration under an ON-state condition. Thus, ZnO TFTs using Cu/Ti bilayer electrodes can be used in next-generation displays.

High-Performance Harsh-Environment-Resistant GaOX Solar-Blind Photodetectors via Defect and Doping Engineering.

Gallium oxide (Ga2 O3 ), with an ultrawide bandgap, is currently regarded as one of the most promising materials for solar-blind photodetectors (SBPDs), which are greatly demanded in harsh environment, such as space exploration and flame prewarning. However, realization of high-performance SBPDs with high tolerance toward harsh environments based on low-cost Ga2 O3 material faces great challenges. Here, defect and doping (DD) engineering towards amorphous GaOX (a-GaOX ) has been proposed to obtain ultrasensitive SBPDs for harsh condition application. Serious oxygen deficiency and doping compensation of the engineered a-GaOX film ensure the high response currents and low dark currents, respectively. Annealing item in nitrogen of DD engineering also incurs the recrystallization of material, formation of nanopores by oxygen escape, and suppression of sub-bandgap defect states. As a result, the tailored GaOX SBPD based on DD engineering not only harvests a record-high responsivity rejection ratio (R254 nm /R365 nm ) of 1.8 × 107 , 102 times higher detectivity, and 2 × 102 times faster decay speed than the control device, but also keeps a high responsivity, high photo-to-dark current ratio, and sharp imaging capability even at high temperature (280 °C) or high bias (100 V). The proposed DD engineering provides an effective strategy towards highly harsh-environment-resistant GaOX SBPDs.

Evolution of the conductive filament system in HfO2-based memristors observed by direct atomic-scale imaging.

The resistive switching effect in memristors typically stems from the formation and rupture of localized conductive filament paths, and HfO2 has been accepted as one of the most promising resistive switching materials. However, the dynamic changes in the resistive switching process, including the composition and structure of conductive filaments, and especially the evolution of conductive filament surroundings, remain controversial in HfO2-based memristors. Here, the conductive filament system in the amorphous HfO2-based memristors with various top electrodes is revealed to be with a quasi-core-shell structure consisting of metallic hexagonal-Hf6O and its crystalline surroundings (monoclinic or tetragonal HfOx). The phase of the HfOx shell varies with the oxygen reservation capability of the top electrode. According to extensive high-resolution transmission electron microscopy observations and ab initio calculations, the phase transition of the conductive filament shell between monoclinic and tetragonal HfO2 is proposed to depend on the comprehensive effects of Joule heat from the conductive filament current and the concentration of oxygen vacancies. The quasi-core-shell conductive filament system with an intrinsic barrier, which prohibits conductive filament oxidation, ensures the extreme scalability of resistive switching memristors. This study renovates the understanding of the conductive filament evolution in HfO2-based memristors and provides potential inspirations to improve oxide memristors for nonvolatile storage-class memory applications.

Fully Printed High-Performance n-Type Metal Oxide Thin-Film Transistors Utilizing Coffee-Ring Effect.

Metal oxide thin-films transistors (TFTs) produced from solution-based printing techniques can lead to large-area electronics with low cost. However, the performance of current printed devices is inferior to those from vacuum-based methods due to poor film uniformity induced by the "coffee-ring" effect. Here, we report a novel approach to print high-performance indium tin oxide (ITO)-based TFTs and logic inverters by taking advantage of such notorious effect. ITO has high electrical conductivity and is generally used as an electrode material. However, by reducing the film thickness down to nanometers scale, the carrier concentration of ITO can be effectively reduced to enable new applications as active channels in transistors. The ultrathin (~10-nm-thick) ITO film in the center of the coffee-ring worked as semiconducting channels, while the thick ITO ridges (>18-nm-thick) served as the contact electrodes. The fully inkjet-printed ITO TFTs exhibited a high saturation mobility of 34.9 cm2 V-1 s-1 and a low subthreshold swing of 105 mV dec-1. In addition, the devices exhibited excellent electrical stability under positive bias illumination stress (PBIS, ΔVth = 0.31 V) and negative bias illuminaiton stress (NBIS, ΔVth = -0.29 V) after 10,000 s voltage bias tests. More remarkably, fully printed n-type metal-oxide-semiconductor (NMOS) inverter based on ITO TFTs exhibited an extremely high gain of 181 at a low-supply voltage of 3 V, promising for advanced electronics applications.

Ultra-High Performance Amorphous Ga2 O3 Photodetector Arrays for Solar-Blind Imaging.

The growing demand for scalable solar-blind image sensors with remarkable photosensitive properties has stimulated the research on more advanced solar-blind photodetector (SBPD) arrays. In this work, the authors demonstrate ultrahigh-performance metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) SBPDs based on amorphous (a-) Ga2 O3 via a post-annealing process. The post-annealed MSM a-Ga2 O3 SBPDs exhibit superhigh sensitivity of 733 A/W and high response speed of 18 ms, giving a high gain-bandwidth product over 104 at 5 V. The SBPDs also show ultrahigh photo-to-dark current ratio of 3.9 × 107 . Additionally, the PDs demonstrate super-high specific detectivity of 3.9 × 1016 Jones owing to the extremely low noise down to 3.5 fW Hz-1/2 , suggesting high signal-to-noise ratio. Underlying mechanism for such superior photoelectric properties is revealed by Kelvin probe force microscopy and first principles calculation. Furthermore, for the first time, a large-scale, high-uniformity 32 × 32 image sensor array based on the post-annealed a-Ga2 O3 SBPDs is fabricated. Clear image of target object with high contrast can be obtained thanks to the high sensitivity and uniformity of the array. These results demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of the Ga2 O3 PDs for applications in solar-blind imaging, environmental monitoring, artificial intelligence and machine vision.

AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet micro-LED emitting at 275 nm.

The investigation of electrical and optical properties of micro-scale AlGaN deep ultraviolet (DUV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) emitting at ∼275nm was carried out, with an emphasis on fabricated devices having a diameter of 300, 200, 100, 50, and 20 µm, respectively. It was revealed that the LED chips with smaller mesa areas deliver considerably higher light output power density; meanwhile, they can sustain a higher current density, which is mainly attributed to the enhanced current spreading uniformity in micro-scale chips. Importantly, when the diameter of LED chips decreases from 300 µm to 20 µm, the peak external quantum efficiency (EQE) increases by 20%, and the EQE peak current density can be boosted from 8.85A/cm2 and 99.52A/cm2. Moreover, we observed a longer wavelength emission with enlarged full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) in the LEDs with smaller chip sizes because of the self-heating effect at high current injection. These experimental observations provide insights into the design and fabrication of high-efficiency micro-LEDs emitting in the DUV regime with different device geometries for various future applications.

Modulating the filament rupture degree of threshold switching device for self-selective and low-current nonvolatile memory application.

Resistive switching devices have tremendous potential for memory, logic, and neuromorphic computing applications. Cation-based resistive switching devices intrinsically show nonvolatile memory characteristics under high compliance current (I CC), while show volatile threshold switching (TS) selector characteristics under low I CC. However, separate researches about cation-based memory or selector are hard to evade the typical current-retention dilemma, which results in the hardship to obtain low-current memory and high-current selector. Here, we propose a novel strategy to realize nonvolatile storage characteristics in a volatile TS device by modulating the rupture degree of conductive filament (CF). Enlarging the rupture degree of the CF with a certain RESET process, as confirmed by transmission electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometry results, the threshold voltage of the Ag/HfO2/Pt TS devices can be enlarged from 0.9 to 2.8 V. Generation of the voltage difference enables the volatile TS devices the ability of self-selective nonvolatile storage. Increasing the RESET magnitude and shrinking the device size have been proved effective ways to increase the read window of the TS memory (TSM) devices. Evading the limit of the current-retention dilemma, ultra-low energy dissipation can be obtained by decreasing I CC to nA level. With self-selective, low-energy, and potential high-density integration characteristics, the proposed TSM device can act as a potential supplement of novel storage class memories.

Advantages of AlGaN-based deep-ultraviolet light-emitting diodes with an Al-composition graded quantum barrier.

AlGaN-based deep-ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (DUV LEDs) still suffer from poor quantum efficiency and low optical power. In this work, we proposed a DUV LED structure that includes five unique AlxGa1-xN quantum barriers (QBs); Each QB has a linear-increment of Al composition by 0.03 along the growth direction, unlike those commonly used flat QBs in conventional LEDs. As a result, the electron and hole concentration in the active region was considerably increased, attributing to the success of the electron blocking effect and enhanced hole injection efficiency. Importantly, the optical power was remarkably improved by 65.83% at the injection current of 60 mA. After in-depth device optimization, we found that a relatively thinner graded QB layer could further boost the LED performance because of the increased carrier concentrations and enhanced electron and hole wave function overlap in the QW, triggering a much higher radiative recombination efficiency. Hence, the proposed graded QBs, which have a continuous increment of Al composition along the growth direction, provide us with an effective solution to boost light output power in the pursuit of high-performance DUV emitters.

Bipolar Analog Memristors as Artificial Synapses for Neuromorphic Computing.

Synaptic devices with bipolar analog resistive switching behavior are the building blocks for memristor-based neuromorphic computing. In this work, a fully complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible, forming-free, and non-filamentary memristive device (Pd/Al2O3/TaOx/Ta) with bipolar analog switching behavior is reported as an artificial synapse for neuromorphic computing. Synaptic functions, including long-term potentiation/depression, paired-pulse facilitation (PPF), and spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), are implemented based on this device; the switching energy is around 50 pJ per spike. Furthermore, for applications in artificial neural networks (ANN), determined target conductance states with little deviation (<1%) can be obtained with random initial states. However, the device shows non-linear conductance change characteristics, and a nearly linear conductance change behavior is obtained by optimizing the training scheme. Based on these results, the device is a promising emulator for biology synapses, which could be of great benefit to memristor-based neuromorphic computing.

An Overview of the Ultrawide Bandgap Ga2O3 Semiconductor-Based Schottky Barrier Diode for Power Electronics Application.

Gallium oxide (Ga2O3) is a new semiconductor material which has the advantage of ultrawide bandgap, high breakdown electric field, and large Baliga's figure of merit (BFOM), so it is a promising candidate for the next-generation high-power devices including Schottky barrier diode (SBD). In this paper, the basic physical properties of Ga2O3 semiconductor have been analyzed. And the recent investigations on the Ga2O3-based SBD have been reviewed. Meanwhile, various methods for improving the performances including breakdown voltage and on-resistance have been summarized and compared. Finally, the prospect of Ga2O3-based SBD for power electronics application has been analyzed.

Breaking the Current-Retention Dilemma in Cation-Based Resistive Switching Devices Utilizing Graphene with Controlled Defects.

Cation-based resistive switching (RS) devices, dominated by conductive filaments (CF) formation/dissolution, are widely considered for the ultrahigh density nonvolatile memory application. However, the current-retention dilemma that the CF stability deteriorates greatly with decreasing compliance current makes it hard to decrease operating current for memory application and increase driving current for selector application. By centralizing/decentralizing the CF distribution, this current-retention dilemma of cation-based RS devices is broken for the first time. Utilizing the graphene impermeability, the cation injecting path to the RS layer can be well modulated by structure-defective graphene, leading to control of the CF quantity and size. By graphene defect engineering, a low operating current (≈1 µA) memory and a high driving current (≈1 mA) selector are successfully realized in the same material system. Based on systematically materials analysis, the diameter of CF, modulated by graphene defect size, is the major factor for CF stability. Breakthrough in addressing the current-retention dilemma will instruct the future implementation of high-density 3D integration of RS memory immune to crosstalk issues.

Negative differential resistance effect induced by metal ion implantation in SiO2 film for multilevel RRAM application.

Pt/SiO2:metal nanoparticles/Pt sandwich structure is fabricated with the method of metal ion (Ag) implantation. The device exhibits multilevel storage with appropriate R off/R on ratio, good endurance and retention properties. Based on transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectrometer analysis, we confirm that Pt nanoparticles are spurted into SiO2 film from Pt bottom electrode by Ag implantation; during electroforming, the local electric field can be enhanced by these Pt nanoparticles, meanwhile the Ag nanoparticles constantly migrate toward the Pt nanoparticles. The implantation induced nanoparticles act as trap sites in the resistive switching layer and play critical roles in the multilevel storage, which is evidenced by the negative differential resistance effect in the current-voltage (I-V) measurements.

Intrinsic anionic rearrangement by extrinsic control: transition of RS and CRS in thermally elevated TiN/HfO2/Pt RRAM.

The sneak path problem is one of the major hindrances to the application of high-density crossbar resistive random access memory; however, complementary resistive switching (CRS) is an effective solution to this problem. The co-existence of resistive switching (RS) and CRS is possible within the same device. Therefore, a precise control is highly required for the successful utilization of different modes. In this study, we have demonstrated an effective way to control both switching modes in a simple HfO2-based crossbar device. The interchange between RS and CRS modes is possible, based on the intrinsic anionic rearrangement by controlling the extrinsic stimulation, either in the form of voltage or in the form of current. In particular, a highly nonlinear CRS mode is reported, in which the nonlinearity is almost 100 times greater than in the RS mode, which is achieved at a high temperature of 150 °C. The procedure reported in this study may be useful for the other resistive memory systems.