Very high photoresponse towards low-powered UV light under low-biased condition by nanocrystal assembled TiO2 film

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in harvesting photoejected electrons for highly sensitive photodetectors, by interfacial engineering rather than the classic semiconductors. However, the widely employed device structures involving a p-n junction that causes photogenerated electron-hole separation to enhance the response are usually complex with a high fabrication challenge. Here, we present TiO2-based highly efficient ultraviolet (UV) photodetection by achieving its nanocrystal assembled film having high surface defects. The sol-gel derived TiO2 films have been subjected to a post-growth annealing at 500°C in air (SA) and vacuum (SB) and one subjected to UV treatment (SC) to tune the surface defects. The UV photoresponse results show that the nanocrystal assembled UV cured TiO2 film shows as high as 1.7×103 UV-to-visible rejection ratio and photo-to-dark current ratio of 1.2×104 under 10V bias and 10μW incident light power. Most interestingly, unprecedently high photo-to-dark current ratio of the order of ∼104 at as low as 1V bias condition and only 10μW incident light without device fabrication has been observed. Moreover, the films show stable response cyclibility under UV radiation. Therefore, simple UV curing improves UV photoresponse properties of TiO2 film enormously without the need to form conventional devices and opens the pathway for high-performance, low-cost, low-power consumption UV photodetector.