Aluminum
nitride (AlN) has been proven as a potential photoelectric
material with high breakdown field strength, excellent thermal conductivity,
and stable physical properties. However, its ultrawide intrinsic band
gap (6.2 eV) prohibits the direct application of AlN as an optical
absorption layer for solar-blind ultraviolet (SBUV) detectors. To
solve this problem, AlYN thin films with a SBUV absorption cut-off
edge of 264 nm were prepared first by energy band engineering using
yttrium (Y) as the dopant, based on which a photovoltaic detector
with a p-Gr/i-AlYN/n-Si structure was fabricated and exhibited excellent performance
of SBUV detection at 0 V bias, including an extremely short rise time
(t
r) of 20 ms, a decay time (t
d) of 60 ms, an ultrahigh detectivity (D*) of 5.09 × 1012 Jones, a responsivity (R) of 13 mA/W, a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE)
of 6.69%, and a rejection ratio (R
255nm/R
310nm) of 245. This work has great
value as a reference for the preparation of high-performance AlN-based
SBUV detectors.