Gallium Nitride Room Temperature α Particle Detectors

Gallium Nitride (GaN) room temperature α particle detectors are fabricated and characterized, whose device structure is Schottky diode. The current-voltage (I-V) measurements reveal that the reverse breakdown voltage of the detectors is more than 200 V owing to the consummate fabrication processes, and that the Schottky barrier and ideal factor of the detectors are 0.64 eV and 1.02, respectively, calculated from the thermionic transmission model. ²⁴¹Am α particles pulse height spectra from the GaN detectors biased at -8 V is obviously one Gauss peak located at channel 44 with the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 15.87 in channel. One of the main reasons for the relatively wider FWHM is that the air between the detectors and isotope could widen the spectrum.