Transition from positive to negative photoconductivity in AlGaN/GaN quantum-well heterostructures

Abstract: The AlGaN/GaN quantum-well heterostructures typically exhibit a positive photoconductivity (PPC) during the light illumination. Surprisingly, we found that introducing the GaN/AlN superlattice (SL) back barrier into N-polar AlGaN/GaN quantum-well heterostructures induces a transition in these heterostructures from PPC to negativie photoconductivity (NPC) as the SL period number increased at room temperature. This transition occurred under an infrared light illumination and can be well explained in terms of the excitation of hot electrons from the two-dimensional electron gas and subsequent trapping them in a SL structure. The NPC effect observed in N-polar AlGaN/GaN heterostructures with SL back barrier exhibits photoconductivity yield exceeding 85 % and thus is the largest ones reported so far for semiconductors. In addition, NPC signal remains relatively stable at high temperatures up to 400 K. The obtained results can be interesting for the development of NPC related devices such as photoelectric logic gates, photoelectronic memory and infrared photodetectors.