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arXiv · 2602.23644

High sub-bandgap response and fast switching enabled by thermal quenching in carbon-doped semi-insulating GaN

Jiahao Dong·Auditee Majumder Momo·Austin Fehr·Sanam SaeidNahaei·Pramod Reddy·Ronny Kirste·Zlatko Sitar·Ramón Collazo·Selim Elhadj
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Abstract

Carbon-doped GaN is a promising material for sub-bandgap triggered optical switches. When incorporated in GaN, carbon introduces deep compensating centers that enable defect-mediated extrinsic photoconductivity. Here, we investigate the optical responsivity and switching kinetics of semi-insulating carbon-doped GaN actuated by sub-bandgap blue illumination. A high ON/OFF ratio exceeding $\mathrm{10^7}$ is achieved under low-irradiance 405-nm excitation. Temperature-dependent transient measurements reveal that the photocurrent decay is thermally quenched above a crossover temperature of ~300 K. This behavior is attributed to hole-emission-assisted recombination. The extracted activation energies vary across samples; a commonly observed value of ~0.83 eV is attributed to the $\mathrm{C_N}$ defect. Notably, when heating above the crossover temperature, thermal quenching accelerates the photocurrent decay by up to a factor of five, enabling significantly faster switching.

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Jiahao Dong, Auditee Majumder Momo, Austin Fehr, Sanam SaeidNahaei, Pramod Reddy, Ronny Kirste, Zlatko Sitar, Ramón Collazo, Selim Elhadj. 2026-02-27. High sub-bandgap response and fast switching enabled by thermal quenching in carbon-doped semi-insulating GaN. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0331659

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