Significant improvement in the performance of well-aligned ZnO nanowire arrays ultraviolet photodetector by Ga doping

Abstract

The low-cost ultraviolet photodetectors (UV PDs) with high performance have wide applications in many important fields, herein, both well-aligned zinc oxide nanowire arrays (ZNWAs) and gallium (Ga)-doped ZNWAs (GZNWAs, Ga/Zn = 1 atom%) UV PDs were fabricated by a hydrothermal technique, their performances were analyzed in detail. The results showed that the GZNWAs UV PD exhibited an excellent response to 365 nm light, its response time (Tr), decay time (Td), responsivity (Rλ), sensitivity (S), detectivity (D⁎) and external quantum efficiency (EQE) were 9.8 s, 45.8 s, 72.8 A/W at 5 V, 747.8 at 0 V, 5.5 × 1012 Jones and 2.5 × 104%, respectively. By comparison, the performances of GZNWAs UV PD were much better than those of ZNWAs UV PD, we found that Ga doping played a key role on improving the performances of ZNWAs-based UV PDs