Synergistic effect of hafnium doping in tin diselenide for enhanced photodetection application

Abstract

For long, photo-sensitive materials of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have been explored in the semiconductor industry. TMDCs have superior environmental stability, apart from their strong light-matter interaction. Although Hafnium-based semiconductors capture great interest due to their high carrier mobility at room temperature, their optoelectronic applications are yet to be explored. Herein, we demonstrate the growth of large size HfxSn1-xSe2 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2) single crystals by direct vapor transport (DVT) technique and optimized photodetection application. Grown crystals have a highly crystalline nature, attributing to the substitutional doping of Hf4+ on Sn4+-sites. With optimized stoichiometry and improved crystallinity, 5% Hf doped SnSe2 shows the superior photoresponse with the maximum photocurrent 198.28 μA under 120 mW/cm2 blue light intensity. The detector shows photoresponsivity of 16.52 mA/W and specific detectivity 19.44 × 109 Jones owing to the highest crystallite size for 5% HF doped SnSe2. This excellent result shows promising application of HfxSn1-xSe2 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2) crystals as high-performance photodetector by improved crystalline nature.