High sub-bandgap response and fast switching enabled by thermal quenching in carbon-doped semi-insulating GaN

Carbon-doped GaN is a promising material for sub-bandgap triggered optical switches. When incorporated in GaN, carbon introduces deep compensating centers that enable defect-mediated extrinsic photoconductivity. Here, we investigate the optical responsivity and switching kinetics of semi-insulating carbon-doped GaN actuated by sub-bandgap blue illumination. A high ON/OFF ratio exceeding 107 is achieved under low-irradiance 405-nm excitation. Temperature-dependent transient measurements reveal that the photocurrent decay is thermally quenched above a crossover temperature of ∼300 K. This behavior is attributed to hole-emission-assisted recombination. The extracted activation energies vary across samples; a commonly observed value of ∼0.83 eV is attributed to the CN defect. Notably, when heating above the crossover temperature, thermal quenching accelerates the photocurrent decay by up to a factor of five, enabling significantly faster switching.