Improving graphene/4H-SiC/graphene MSM UV photodetector sensitivity using interdigitated electrodes formalism and embedded gold plasmonic nanoparticles

In this paper, a novel 4H-SiC metal–semiconductor-metal photodetector design based on Graphene electrode engineering and gold nanoparticles is proposed. The benefits of using an intense light trapping formalism to improve the optical performance of the 4H-SiC PD are investigated by means of an accurate optoelectronic model. The developed model is based on the EMT and avoids the difficulty of considering all nanoparticles. The precision assessment of the built model is carried out by comparison with the experimental data. The findings shed light on the ability of the proposed design to realize the dual task of reducing the unwanted shadowing effect and improving the absorption through Graphene electrode formalism and the Surface Plasmon Resonance effect in the 4H-SiC layer. Furthermore, to optimize the design sensing capability, the proposed model is adopted to formulate fitness functions for the multi-objective genetic algorithm. It is found that for a filling fraction of 0.02 and 7.5 nm radius, the optimized design yields 50 % increase in absorption compared to the standard designs where responsivity of 458 mA/W, PDCR of 3.05 × 106 and response time of 4.7 µs are achieved. These findings confirm the outstanding ability of the proposed design approach to boost up the PD active area for low-cost and high sensing capability, making it valuable for optoelectronic application.