Composition-dependent photoconductivities in indium aluminium nitride nanorods grown by magnetron sputter epitaxy

Photoconduction (PC) properties were investigated for ternary indium aluminium nitride (In(x)Al(1−x)N) nanorods (NRs) with different indium compositions (x) from 0.35 to 0.68, as grown by direct-current reactive magnetron sputter epitaxy. Cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) reveals single-crystal quality of the vertically aligned In(x)Al(1−x)N NRs. Single-rod photodetector devices with good ohmic contacts were fabricated using the focused-ion-beam technique (FIB), where the In-rich In(0.68)Al(0.32)N NR exhibits an optimal photocurrent responsivity of 1400 A W(−1) and photoconductive gain of 3300. A transition from a positive photoresponse to a negative photoresponse was observed, while increasing the In composition x from 0.35 to 0.57. The negative PC was further enhanced by increasing x to 0.68. A model based on the coexistence and competition of deep electron trap states and recombination centers was proposed to explain the interesting composition-dependent PC in these ternary III-nitride 1D nanostructures.