A novel Ag nanoparticles/TiO2 nanowires-based photodetector and glucose concentration detection

Abstract

A unique vapour transport cum glancing angle deposition (VT-GLAD) technique was employed to fabricate titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanowires (NWs). The NWs were grown and assembled to form the clusters. Both brookite (412) and rutile (002) phase for TiO2 was obtained from X-ray diffraction (XRD). The d spacing of ~ 1.37 A was calculated from the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of TiO2 NWs, which corresponds to (002) crystal plane. The silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) on TiO2 NWs were grown using thermal evaporation cum GLAD technique. The presence of Ag NPs on the TiO2 NWs enhanced the photoconduction as compared to bare TiO2 NWs device. The maximum photosensitivity of the Ag NPs/TiO2 NWs based device was recorded ~ 1.6 times compared to the bare TiO2 NWs based device at − 2.5 V. The Ag NPs containing device was highly UV sensitive and maximum responsivity for the device was calculated to be ~ 2.3 A/W at 370 nm. The device also possessed high responsivity rejection (RR) ratio of ~ 6.5 between UV (370 nm) and visible (450 nm) light. The Ag NPs decorated TiO2 NWs based detector also showed response to white light. The different concentration of glucose into deionised (DI) water-based solution was detected precisely under white light illumination. The normalised (light/dark) detector current/glucose concentration value was decreased from ~ 0.19 to ~ 0.05 at − 2.5 V, with an increase in glucose concentration into the solution from 40 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl.