Photodetectors (PDs) are getting attention due to their various applications of environmental sensing, fast detection of biochemical reactions, and flame monitoring, etc. In this work, self-powered photoresponse was attained by controlling the surface states of tin oxide (SnO2) nanostructure arrays. The surface states were controlled by varying electrode configurations (ECs) and active areas. The Structural refinement (Rietveld) was carried out to quantify the SnO2 phase using XRD data. The optical, surface morphology, and elemental compositional analysis were characterized by TRPL, FESEM and HRTEM, and XPS, respectively. The characteristics of PD device were performed under UV light (365 nm). The self-powered performance was achieved for gride-type EC which attributed that due to different thickness of the electrodes thereby electric potential form across the electrodes. The transient photoresponse curves were measured for different bias voltages for all the ECs to achieve the photoresponse at zero bias, and eventually zero bias photoresponse was achieved. Under dark condition, negative sign current of −1.68 × 10−11 A was showed, whereas it reached positive sign photocurrent of 4.60 × 10−11 A under illumination. It was elucidated by asymmetric distribution of electric potentials across the electrodes. The PD device parameters indicated that the higher Rλ, EQE, LDR, detectivity, and photosensitivity values. The monolayer-based self-powered photoresponse was obtained in ohmic contact. Our work reveals that NAs facilitate the ability of effective harvesting of incident photons which can utilize potential candidate for optoelectronics based self-powered devices.