【Domestic Papers】Solar-blind UV light-modulated β-Ga₂O₃ full-wave bridge rectifier

      Researchers from the Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications have published a dissertation titled "Solar-blind UV light-modulated β-Ga₂O₃ full-wave bridge rectifier" in Journal of Semiconductors.

Project Support

      This work was supported by Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province of China (No. 2023JCYB574) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 62204203).

Background

      β-Ga₂O₃ has the ultrawide bandgap of 4.5-4.9 eV and the high breakdown electric field of 8 MV/cm, which demonstrates the great potential in power electronics. There are many types of gallium oxide devices, Schottky-barrier diodes (SBD) is one of the most widely studied device structures. In recent years, the development of gallium oxide SBD is very rapid, and its performance has been greatly improved. In the alternating current(AC) - direct current(DC) conversion process of power systems, it is particularly efficient and simple that four diodes are arranged in a bridge configuration to form a closed loop for full-wave rectification of the input AC signa. Therefore, some efforts recently have focused on the full-wave bridge rectifier based on β-Ga₂O₃ SBD. Zhou developed a unified hybrid compact model of a different structure β-Ga₂O₃ Schottky diodes (SBDs) for full-wave rectifier and mixer applications. Hong proposed and fabricated a β-Ga₂O₃ discrete SBD-based rectifier with embedded microchannels in a ceramic substrate for active cooling. Nevertheless, at present, this field is concentrated only on model research and on rectifiers composed of discrete devices, and there are few reports about actual monolithic integrated Ga₂O₃ full-wave rectifier circuit.

Abstract

      A monolithic integrated full-wave bridge rectifier consisted of horizontal Schottky-barrier diodes (SBD) is prepared based on 100 nm ultra-thin β-Ga₂O₃ and demonstrated the solar-blind UV (SUV) light-modulated characteristics. Under SUV light illumination, the rectifier has the excellent full-wave rectification characteristics for the AC input signals of 5 V, 12 V and 24 V with different frequencies. Further, experimental results confirmed the feasibility of continuously tuning the rectified output through SUV light-encoding. This work provides valuable insights for the development of optically programmable Ga₂O₃ AC-DC converters.

Conclusion

      In this paper, a monolithic integrated full-wave bridge rectifier consisting of horizontal SBDs is fabricated based on 100 nm ultra-thin β-Ga₂O₃ and demonstrated its solar-blind UV light modulation characteristics. Under SUV light, the rectifier has the excellent full-wave rectification characteristics for the different AC input signals of 5 V, 12 V and 24 V, and also shows the ability of SUV-encoding modulating output signal. This work provides a new thinking and practice for the development of gallium oxide full-wave bridge rectifier.