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Improved sensitivity in self-powered photoelectrochemical UV photodetector by application of graphene quantum dots

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Abstract

Here, we demonstrate the successful application of graphene quantum dots (GQDs) as a sensitizing material in a self-powered photoelectrochemical (PEC) UV photodetector (PD). Relative enhancements greater than 40% in photocurrent were achieved by the application of a GQDs sensitized TiO2 layer as the photoanode in the self-powered PEC UV PD, attaining 118 mA W−1 responsivity compared to 83 mA W−1 responsivity of PD made by pure TiO2 photoanode under the illumination of 365 nm UV light. The GQDs improved both the light-harvesting efficiency and the charge collection efficiency in the PEC PD by increasing the UV light absorption and hindering the recombination at the photoanode/electrolyte interface. The UV PD based on the GQDs sensitized TiO2 layer exhibits a high photoresponse sensitivity of 786,880% at a low light intensity of 2 mW cm−2, a rise time of 0.12 s, and a decay time of 0.03 s without any external bias. This study shows that sensitization of photoanode layer with a proper sensitizing material such as GQDs with large absorption coefficient in UV wavelength region can be a facile strategy to improve the responsivity and sensitivity of low-cost, environmentally friendly, and easy-manufacturing self-powered PEC UV PDs.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available in the main text and supplementary material of this article.

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Acknowledgements

S. Z. Thanks Dr. R. Ahmadi for providing the opportunity to use AutoLab workstation for characterizations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Advanced Technologies, Shiraz University, 7194684560, Shiraz, Iran

    Soheyla Zarei, Zahra Hosseini, Seyed Ali Sabetghadam & Teymoor Ghanbari

Authors
  1. Soheyla Zarei
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  2. Zahra Hosseini
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  3. Seyed Ali Sabetghadam
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  4. Teymoor Ghanbari
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Contributions

S.Z. contributed to methodology, validation, investigation, writing original draft, visualization. Z.H. contributed to conceptualization, methodology, validation, writing, review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. S.A.S. contributed to investigation, visualization. T. Ghanbari contributed to writing, review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zahra Hosseini.

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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Zarei, S., Hosseini, Z., Sabetghadam, S.A. et al. Improved sensitivity in self-powered photoelectrochemical UV photodetector by application of graphene quantum dots. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 136, 515 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01529-2

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