Improving the Performance of a Zinc Oxide Nanowire Ultraviolet Photodetector by Adding Silver Nanoparticles

Abstract

A significant enhancement in the performance of a ZnO nanowire-based UV detector has been achieved through fabricating a Ag/ZnO heterostructure by a photoreduction reaction. This enhancement is due to a Schottky barrier at the interface of Ag and ZnO because of the formation of a thin AgOx layer. An efficient and low-working-temperature method was proposed for eliminating the familiar persistent photoconductivity in ZnO nanostructure-based photodetectors, and the approach can be widely applied to other photodetectors employing the Schottky barrier phenomenon.