DFT Study about the Effect of Doping on the Properties of GaSb Material and Designing of High-Efficiency Infrared Photodetector

Abstract

The gallium antimonide (GaSb) material has very attractive electronic and optoelectronic properties which are suitable for next-generation infrared (IR) photodetector applications. In this work, properties of undoped GaSb material such as density of states, bandstructure, electron density, absorption coefficient, dielectric function, refractive index, and extinction coefficient are calculated using density-functional theory (DFT). Moreover, the effects of doping with Ge, Sn, and Zn elements on these properties of GaSb material are investigated. It is found that undoped GaSb material exhibits a direct gap of ≈0.72 eV. Among different doping elements, Ge-doped GaSb produces a very significant enhancement in optical properties. The Ge-doped GaSb demonstrates a four times higher absorption coefficient in comparison to undoped GaSb in the IR region at 0.8 eV photon energy. GaSb-based photodetector device is designed using the Solar Cell Capacitance Simulator (SCAPS) 1D tool. The efficiency of the designed photodetector with optimum thicknesses and doping of different layers is found to be improved from 21.34% to 25.91% after incorporating the absorption data set obtained from the DFT calculations. Additionally, the photodetector with optimum parameters demonstrates maximum responsivity of value ≈0.31 A W−1. In the previous findings, it is demonstrated that GaSb is a very suitable material for next-generation IR photodetector applications. © 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.