Composition-dependent photoconductivities in indium aluminium nitride nanorods grown by magnetron sputter epitaxy

Abstract

Photoconduction (PC) properties were investigated for ternary indium aluminium nitride (In_xAl_1−xN) nanorods (NRs) with different indium compositions (x) from 0.35 to 0.68, as grown by direct-current reactive magnetron sputter epitaxy. Cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) reveals single-crystal quality of the vertically aligned In_xAl_1−xN NRs. Single-rod photodetector devices with good ohmic contacts were fabricated using the focused-ion-beam technique (FIB), where the In-rich In_0.68Al_0.32N NR exhibits an optimal photocurrent responsivity of 1400 A W⁻¹ and photoconductive gain of 3300. A transition from a positive photoresponse to a negative photoresponse was observed, while increasing the In composition x from 0.35 to 0.57. The negative PC was further enhanced by increasing x to 0.68. A model based on the coexistence and competition of deep electron trap states and recombination centers was proposed to explain the interesting composition-dependent PC in these ternary III-nitride 1D nanostructures.