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2D nonlayered tellurium nanosheets for self-powered photodetectors

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Abstract

Tellurium (Te) is a kind of multifunctional material attracting a great deal of interest. Herein, we described a substrate-free solution process to produce Te nanosheets (Te NSs) and build photodetectors (PDs) of photoelectrochemical (PEC) type based on them. The PDs are self-powered according to the photocurrent density about 0.28 µA cm−2 and the photo responsivity of 3.37 µA W−1 when the optical power is 80.2 mW cm−2 without any extrinsic voltage. They exhibit excellent photo-response switching behaviors with high responsivity (15.8 µA W−1) and rapid response time (~ 227 ms of the rise time and ~ 293 ms of the fall time) at 0.6 V potential, as well as great long-term stability and durability (storage in ethanol for 1 month). Simultaneously, we measured the photoelectric response after heating the solution to explore the effect of the solution temperature on the photoelectric properties of Te NSs. At a temperature of 70℃, the enhancement was leveraged to promote the photo-response to 14.3 µA W−1. This work paved the way for developing higher performance PDs.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (No. 22B0171, 19C1746), National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2015CB921103), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT 17R91), and Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (No. 2021JJ40524).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Energy Materials and Devices, School of Physics and Optoelectronics, Xiangtan University, Hunan, 411105, People’s Republic of China

    Nanyin Zhao, Kai Wang & Jun Li

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  1. Nanyin Zhao
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Contributions

NZ: conceptualization, methodology, validation, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing—original draft, and visualization. KW: resources, investigation, editing, and supervision. JL: conceptualization, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Jun Li.

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Zhao, N., Wang, K. & Li, J. 2D nonlayered tellurium nanosheets for self-powered photodetectors. Appl. Phys. A 129, 872 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-07145-4

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