A heterostructure using p-NiO/n-Zn(1−x)Sn(x)O (x = 0.14) (TZO) junction was successfully fabricated by DC-magnetron reactive sputtering technique for UV sensing. Under weak illumination of UV radiation (365 nm, 0.06 mW/cm2), the fabricated device had shown a photo responsivity of ~3.00 mA W−1 and quantum efficiencies about 1.01% even in zero bias condition. The device also exhibited impressive photo response about 19.70 mA W−1 and external quantum efficiencies nearly 6.69% at low reverse external bias of 3 V. The fabricated hybrid hetero structured UV photosensors had also shown great detectivity and transient speed of response about 8.6 × 1010 Jones, 2.3 s/1.4 s at zero bias respectively. Hence these observations suggest that p-NiO/n-TZO heterojunction could be used as novel, self-powered highly transparent photosensors for detecting UV radiation.