Epitaxial Growth of 2D Ultrathin Metastable γ-Bi2O3 Flakes for High Performance Ultraviolet Photodetection

Ultraviolet detection is of great significance due to its wide applications in the missile tracking, flame detecting, pollution monitoring, and so on. The nonlayered semiconductor gamma-Bi2O3 is a promising candidate toward high-performance UV detection due to the wide bandgap, excellent light sensitivity, environmental stability, nontoxic and elemental abundance properties. However, controllable preparation of ultrathin 2D gamma-Bi2O3 flakes remains a challenge, owing to its nonlayered structure, metastable nature, and other competing phases. Moreover, the UV photodetectors based on 2D gamma-Bi2O3 flake have not been implemented yet. Here, ultrathin (down to 4.8 nm) 2D gamma-Bi2O3 flakes with high crystal quality are obtained via a van der Waals epitaxy method. The as-synthesized single-crystalline gamma-Bi2O3 flakes show a body-centered cubic structure and grown along (111) lattice plane as revealed by experimental observations. More importantly, photodetectors based on the as-synthesized 2D gamma-Bi2O3 flakes exhibit promising UV detection ability, including a responsivity of 64.5 A W-1, a detectivity of 1.3 x 10(13) Jones, and an ultrafast response speed (tau(rise) approximate to 290 mu s and tau(decay) approximate to 870 mu s) at 365 nm, suggesting its great potential for various optoelectronic applications.

Automated summary

In this study, high-quality ultrathin γ-Bi2O3 flakes were obtained via a van der Waals epitaxy method, showing promising UV detection abilities with high responsivity, detectivity, and ultrafast response speed. This suggests great potential for various optoelectronic applications.