AAO-Assisted Synthesis of Aligned CuO Nanorod Arrays by Electrochemical Deposition for Self-powered NIR Photodetection

Cupper (Cu) nanorod arrays were synthesized using AAO-assisted electrochemical deposition process and using a potentiostat. The Cu nanorods-AAO congregation was calcined inside a conventional furnace under an adapted environment. Subsequently, the AAO template was subjected to wet chemical etching to generate an unique feature of free-standing aligned CuO nanorods onto Si substrate. Schottky contact electrodes were used to fabricate high performance a free-standing CuO nanorods NIR photodetector based on metal-semiconductor-metal. The electrical performance and photoelectric response demonstrated that a self-powered NIR photodetector has an excellent sensitivity up to 805 nm with NIR laser diode source. This work exhibited that the response and recovery time were rapid, with 0.030 s and 0.035 s, respectively. Compared to other NIR photodetectors reported in the literature, our photodetector demonstrated shorter response and recovery times.