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High-performance solar-blind ultraviolet photodetector based on electrospun TiO2-ZnTiO3 heterojunction nanowires

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Abstract

High-performance solar-blind UV (ultraviolet) photodetectors (PDs) based on low-dimension semiconducting nanostructures with high sensitivity, excellent cycle stability, and the ability to operate in harsh environments are critical for solar observations, space communication, UV astronomy, and missile tracking. In this study, TiO2-ZnTiO3 heterojunction nanowire-based PDs are successfully developed and used to detect solar-blind UV light. A photoconductive analysis indicates that the fabricated PDs are sensitive to UV illumination, with high sensitivity, good stability, and high reproducibility. Further analysis indicates that the rich existence of grain boundaries within the TiO2-ZnTiO3 nanowire can greatly decrease the dark current and recombination of the electron-hole pairs and thereby significantly increase the device’s photosensitivity, spectra responsivity (1.1 × 106), and external quantum efficiency (4.3 × 108 %). Moreover, the PDs exhibit good photodetective performance with fast photoresponse and recovery and excellent thermal stability at temperatures as high as 175 °C. According to these results, TiO2-ZnTiO3 heterojunction nanowires exhibit great potential for applications in high-performance optical electronics and PDs, particularly next-generation photodetectors with the ability to operate in harsh environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Surface Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, China

    Haining Chong & Huijun Yang

  2. School of Materials, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo, 315016, China

    Haining Chong, Guodong Wei, Huilin Hou, Minghui Shang, Fengmei Gao & Weiyou Yang

  3. State Key Laboratory for Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Guozhen Shen

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  1. Haining Chong
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  2. Guodong Wei
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  4. Huijun Yang
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  5. Minghui Shang
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  7. Weiyou Yang
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  8. Guozhen Shen
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Correspondence to Weiyou Yang or Guozhen Shen.

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Chong, H., Wei, G., Hou, H. et al. High-performance solar-blind ultraviolet photodetector based on electrospun TiO2-ZnTiO3 heterojunction nanowires. Nano Res. 8, 2822–2832 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-015-0787-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-015-0787-x

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