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Faculty Bibliography 2010s Faculty Bibliography

1-1-2012

Infrared detectors based on semiconductor p-n junction of PbSe

Vladimir Kasiyan

Zinovi Dashevsky

Casey Minna Schwarz

University of Central Florida

M. Shatkhin
University of Central Florida

Elena Flitsiyan

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Recommended Citation
Kasiyan, Vladimir; Dashevsky, Zinovi; Schwarz, Casey Minna; Shatkhin, M.; Flitsiyan, Elena; Chernyak,
Leonid; and Khokhlov, Dmitry, "Infrared detectors based on semiconductor p-n junction of PbSe" (2012).
Faculty Bibliography 2010s. 2837.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2010/2837
Authors
Vladimir Kasiyan, Zinovi Dashevsky, Casey Minna Schwarz, M. Shatkhin, Elena Flitsiyan, Leonid Chernyak,
and Dmitry Khokhlov

This article is available at STARS: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2010/2837

Infrared detectors based on semiconductor
p-n junction of PbSe
Cite as: J. Appl. Phys. 112, 086101 (2012); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4759011
Submitted: 29 May 2012 . Accepted: 12 September 2012 . Published Online: 17 October 2012

Vladimir Kasiyan, Zinovi Dashevsky, Casey Minna Schwarz, M. Shatkhin, Elena Flitsiyan, Leonid Chernyak,
and Dmitry Khokhlov

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J. Appl. Phys. 112, 086101 (2012); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4759011 112, 086101

© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

 JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 112, 086101 (2012)

Infrared detectors based on semiconductor p-n junction of PbSe

Vladimir Kasiyan,1 Zinovi Dashevsky,1 Casey Minna Schwarz,2 M. Shatkhin,2
Elena Flitsiyan,2 Leonid Chernyak,2,a) and Dmitry Khokhlov3
1
Department of Materials Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
2
Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816-2385, USA
3
Physics Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia
(Received 29 May 2012; accepted 12 September 2012; published online 17 October 2012)
P-n junctions based on physical vapor deposition of thin PbSe films and conductivity type
inversion from n- to p-type are developed and characterized over a wide range of temperatures and
bias voltages. Photosensitivity and diode characteristics in the thin film PbSe diode structures were
found at temperatures up to 300 K. The values of the measured and estimated parameters of these
structures demonstrate their high photodetector performance and the potential for development of
IR detectors with optimal sensitivity at the highest possible operating temperature. V C 2012

American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4759011]

In previous studies, annealing of PbS polycrystalline films control system (model 32 BB). Electric signals were meas-
in oxygen has led to a change in their conductivity type (from n ured by Keithley 2000 multi-meters and recorded using a
to p) and now this method is widely used for the preparation of home-made LabVIEW program.
photosensitive IR resistors based on PbS layers.1 At the same Improvement of structural and transport properties of
time, functional p-n junctions based on PbSe are very little n-type thin PbSe films were made by heat treatment in argon
studied and robust p-n junction characteristics, based on the at 400  C for 1 h under the pressure of 1 atm in an encapsu-
thermal oxidation of PbSe, have yet to be reported. Since IR lated reactor. Note that annealing in argon does not change
detector performance is strongly influenced by p-n junction the type of conductivity in the samples, but leads to
characteristics, it is important to understand how the prepara- the increase of electron mobility to 210 cm2/Vs at 100 K
tion technology can impact the device properties. (vs. 150 cm2/Vs at 100 K before annealing).
While the electrical conductivity type conversion from Thermal oxidation of thin PbSe films was carried out in
n- to p-type in PbSe is known, the main point of this work is a resistance-heated furnace and a cylindrical stainless-steel
in development of IR p-n junction PbSe detectors, which can reactor containing the samples. The oxidation temperature
perform with optimal sensitivity at the highest possible oper- ranged from 400 to 500  C. The experimental setup was
ating temperature. PbSe p-n junctions based on physical computer-controlled with temperature accuracy within
vapor deposition (PVD) of the thin films and conductivity 61  C. The CTI from n- to p-type was discovered in these
type inversion (CTI) in them from n- to p-type are fabricated films after treatment in oxygen at 400  C. Titanium (Ti) con-
and characterized over a wide range of temperatures and bias tacts, prepared by electron beam PVD technique, were used
voltages. Photosensitivity and diode characteristics in thin for electrical measurements. The current-voltage (I-V) char-
film PbSe diode structures are examined in the temperature acteristics were found to be linear for all n- and p-type PbSe
range from 4.2 to 300 K. samples over the entire temperature range examined, thus
Polycrystalline 1–3 lm thick n-type PbSe films with ma- confirming the Ohmic nature of the contacts. After oxidation,
jority electron concentration of (1-4)  1019 cm3 and mobil- the carrier concentration, p, was basically constant at
ity of 60–120 cm2/Vs at room temperature were grown on a 7  1018 cm3 between 80 and 300 K and was not dependent
silicon/silicon dioxide (Si/SiO2) substrate using a PbSe source on the duration of heat treatment in oxygen. The electrical
in electron beam-assisted Edwards E306A physical vapor dep- conductivity within the same temperature range was found to
osition system under the vacuum of 105 Torr. The film thick- be between 2 and 10 X1 cm1 depending on the duration of
ness was measured by the Edwards FTM5 Digital Film heat treatment in oxygen.
Thickness Monitor with a resolution of 0.1 nm, and the depo- Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and x-ray diffraction
sition rate was about 0.1–0.2 nm/s. The film morphology, (XRD) were used to determine the quality and composition
mean grain size, and surface roughness depend on the sub- of thin film PbSe structures. AFM images displayed poly-
strate temperature, Ts, which was kept fixed within 63  C. crystalline morphology with grain size ranging from 200 to
Hall Effect measurements were carried out between 300 nm and the root mean square surface roughness between
4.2 K and 300 K at the magnetic field of 1 T. The samples 10 and 15 nm. The XRD spectrum of PbSe film revealed a
were mounted on a copper holder in a variable-temperature single face centered cubic (FCC) crystalline phase with a
He closed-cycle Janis cryostat (model SRDK 101D) operat- rock salt structure indicating a texture with the axis in [100]
ing under the pressure of 107 Torr. Temperature stabiliza- direction perpendicular to the substrate.
tion was maintained at 60.01 K by the CryoCon cryogenic We propose that the mechanism responsible for CTI in
thin PbSe films after oxidation is due to generation of
a)
E-mail: [email protected]. acceptor states at the surface of n-type grains from oxygen

0021-8979/2012/112(8)/086101/3/$30.00 112, 086101-1 C 2012 American Institute of Physics

V
086101-2 Kasiyan et al. J. Appl. Phys. 112, 086101 (2012)

diffusion along the grain boundaries.1–3 The following pro-

cess, illustrated in Fig. 1(a), may accompany the thermal oxi-
dation of thin PbSe film: oxygen chemisorption on grain
surfaces and boundaries, oxygen diffusion along grain surfa-
ces and boundaries into the grain bulk as in Fig. 1(a) (1–3),
Pb and Se out diffusion from the grains as in Fig. 1(a) (4)
and the formation of oxide phases as in Fig. 1(a) (5–6).2 The
schematic drawing of the thin PbSe film heterojunction is
presented in Fig. 1(b).
Current-voltage characteristics and photoelectric proper-
ties were measured over a temperature range of 4–330 K using
a helium gas Janis closed-cycle cryostat (model SRDK 101D)
evacuated down to 107 Torr. The GaAs laser (wavelength
k ¼ 0.65 lm) with 5 mW power and InAs light emitting diode,
LED (wavelength k ¼ 2.3 lm), were employed as the light
sources. The produced photo-voltage signal was measured by
a SR-7265 DSP lock-in amplifier and collected by a
computer-recording system based on the LabVIEW Program. FIG. 2. Variable temperature current-voltage characteristics of the thin film
The experimental I-V curves for thin film PbSe diode PbSe diode structure. Inset: the first negative quadrant for the current-
voltage characteristics of the thin film PbSe diode structure under GaAs laser
structure as a function of temperature are plotted in Fig. 2. illumination. Open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current are determined
These I-V curves have also been fitted by the Shockley’s for- as intersections with x- and y-axis, respectively.
mula (with the series resistance, Rs, equal to 0 within experi-
mental accuracy), The dynamic resistance, Rd, is given by
   
eV nkT
J ¼ JS exp 1 ; (1) Rd ¼ : (2)
nkT eJ

where Js is the saturation current, e is the electron charge, n Calculated values of the dynamic resistance, Rd, and the
is ideality factor, T is absolute temperature. The parameters ideality factor, n, as a function of temperature are presented
Js and n were found by standard fitting in the forward bias in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b), respectively. The dark current and the
region. Fig. 2, inset, shows the I-V characteristics of thin film thermal noise of an IR photodiode can be characterized by
PbSe diode structure under GaAs laser illumination. Accord- RdA,4 defined as the product of the diode dynamic resistance,
ing to this figure, the structure saves the diode characteristics Rd, at zero bias, and the diode area, A. The RdA values allow
up to 300 K. us to estimate the specific detectivity, D*, of these diodes.
The specific detectivity, D*, of a photodiode is defined
as5
Rk
Dk ¼  1=2 ;
4kT
þ 2e2 g QB
Rd A
ð
1
(3)
Rk ¼ gek=hc; QB ð c ; TÞ ¼ JðÞ d
c
2
8p 1
JðÞ ¼  :
c2 expðh=kTÞ  1

Here, Rk is the current-mode responsivity at wavelength

k, g is the quantum efficiency, and  c or kc are the cut-off
frequency or wavelength, respectively. J() is the flux den-
sity per unit frequency interval. For the black body radiation
at 300 K, the typical values for the above parameters are:
g  0.5 and Rk (kc ¼ 4 lm)  1.6 A/W. These values were
used for the estimates.
FIG. 1. (a) Model of oxidation process in thin film PbSe. Here, (1–3) repre- The detectivity in the Eq. (3) consists of two contribu-
sents oxygen chemisorption on grain surfaces and boundaries, oxygen diffu- tions. While the first term in the denominator represents the
sion along grain surfaces and boundaries into the grain bulk; (4) represents
Johnson noise, the second one stands for the background-
Pb and Se out diffusion from the grains; (5) represents the formation of
oxide phases. (b) Schematic view of the thin film PbSe heterojunction. induced noise. We, thus, estimate D* for thin film PbSe
(Thicknesses of PbSeO3 and PbSe are not shown to scale.) diode structure at T  300 K to be 1  109 cm Hz1/2/W.
086101-3 Kasiyan et al. J. Appl. Phys. 112, 086101 (2012)

FIG. 3. (a) Temperature dependence of dynamic resistance, Rd, for the thin
film PbSe diode structure. (b) The dependence of ideality factor, n, on tem-
perature for the thin film PbSe diode.

The room temperature photoresponse for the thin film FIG. 4. (a) Photosignal of the thin film PbSe diode structure at T ¼ 300 K
PbSe diode structure as a function of bias voltage at 1 kHz is (1 kHz; GaAs laser illumination) vs. bias voltage. (b) The relative photosig-
presented in Fig. 4(a). The photosignal disappears at the for- nal of the thin film PbSe diode structure as a function of temperature and
illumination by GaAs laser (k ¼ 650 nm) and InAs LED (k ¼ 2.3 lm) with
ward bias close the barrier height, eVb, with the build-in different pulse frequency.
potential, Vb, experimentally estimated from the slope in Fig.
4(a) to be around 100 mV. The relative photosignal under demonstrates their suitability as photodetectors. The CTI
GaAs laser (k ¼ 650 nm) and InAs LED (wavelength from n- to p-type in thin PbSe films is observed after treat-
k ¼ 2.3 lm) illumination for thin film PbSe diode structure as ment in oxygen at 400  C. We propose that the mechanism
a function of temperature and pulse frequency is plotted in responsible for CTI in thin PbSe films after oxidation is
Fig. 4(b). One can see from this figure that the thin film PbSe through generation of acceptor states at the surface of n-type
diode structure exhibits photosensitivity up to 300 K, with grains due to oxygen diffusion along the grain boundaries.
the maximum at 200 K. The same behavior seen for the pho-
tosignal temperature dependence, both under GaAs laser and
InAs LED illuminations, leads to the conclusion that PbSe ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
diodes are photosensitive in the IR spectral range up to the This research was supported in part by NATO under the
PbSe band gap (4.3 lm). Although the dynamic resistance, Collaborative Linkage Grant # 984277.
Rd, for the photodetector decreases with increasing tempera-
ture (cf. Fig. 3(a)), we observe a decrease of the photosignal
at room temperature versus 200 K, as in Fig. 4(b), due to 1
E. I. Rogacheva, I. M. Krivulkin, O. N. Nashchekina, A. Yu. Sipatov, V. V.
thermal generation of electron-hole pairs, which, in turn, Volobuev, and M. S. Dresselhas, Appl. Phys. Lett. 78, 1661 (2001).
2
reduces the signal-to-noise ratio. Photosensitivity in the tem- N. V. Golubchenko, V. A. Moshnikov, and D. B. Chesnokova, Inorg.
Mater. 42, 942 (2006).
perature range from 200 to 300 K allows using a Thermo- 3
A. E. Gamarts, V. M. Lebedev, V. A. Moshnikov, and D. B. Chesnokova,
electric Cooler Module integrated with thin film PbSe diode Semiconductors 38, 1160 (2004).
4
structure, thus eliminating the need for liquid nitrogen M. B. Reine, A. K. Scoot, and T. J. Tredwell, Semiconductor and Semime-
tals, edited by R. K. Willardson and A. C. Beer (Academic, New York,
cooling. 1981), Vol. 18, pp. 201–311.
The presence of photosensitivity and rectifying charac- 5
C. A. Kennedy, K. J. Linden, and D. A. Solderman, Proc. IEEE 63, 27
teristics in diode structures at temperatures up to 300 K (1975).