A high responsivity and controllable recovery ultraviolet (UV) photodetector based on a tungsten oxide (WO₃) gate AlGaN/GaN heterostructure with an integrated micro-heater is reported for the first time. The WO₃nanolayer was deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD) for deep UV absorption and the micro-heater was integrated for chip level heating and cooling. Our device when exposed to UV wavelength exhibits a high responsivity of 1.67 × 10⁴A W⁻¹at 240 nm and a sharp cut-off wavelength of 275 nm. More importantly, the persistent photoconductivity (PPC) effect can be eliminated by a novel method, mono-pulse heating reset (MHR), which consists in applying an appropriate pulse voltage to the micro-heater right after the removal of the UV illumination. The recovery time was reduced from hours to just seconds without reducing the high responsivity and stability of the photodetector. The UV detection, high responsivity, high stability, controllable recovery process and low production cost of GaN-based photodetectors make these devices extremely attractive for several applications, such as fire detection and missile and rocket warning.

A suspended WO₃-gate AlGaN/GaN heterostructure photodetector integrated with a micro-heater is micro-fabricated and characterized for ultraviolet photo detection. The transient optical characteristics of the photodetector at different temperatures are studied. The 2DEG-based photodetector shows a recovery (170 s) time under 240 nm illumination at 150 ℃. The measured spectral response of WO₃-gate AlGaN/GaN heterostructure shows a high response in deep ultraviolet range. Responsivity at 240 nm wavelength is 4600 A/W at 0.5 V bias. These characteristics support the feasibility of a high accuracy deep UV detector based on the suspended AlGaN/GaN heterostructure integrated with a micro-heater.

This paper demonstrates a method to reduce the decay time in AlGaN/GaN photodetectors by a pulsed heating mode. A suspended AlGaN/GaN heterostructure photodetector integrated with a micro-heater is fabricated and characterized under ultraviolet illumination. We have observed that the course of persistent photoconductivity was effectively accelerated by applying pulsed heating. The decay time is significantly reduced from 175 s by DC heating to 116 s by 50 Hz pulsed heating at the same power (280 mW). With the same pulse duty cycle and a 50 Hz pulsed heating frequency, a reduction of 30%-45% in decay time is measured compared to DC heating.