Significant improvement in the performance of well-aligned ZnO nanowire arrays ultraviolet photodetector by Ga doping

The low-cost ultraviolet photodetectors (UV PDs) with high performance have wide applications in many important fields, herein, both well-aligned zinc oxide nanowire arrays (ZNWAs) and gallium (Ga)-doped ZNWAs (GZNWAs, Ga/Zn = 1 atom%) UV PDs were fabricated by a hydrothermal technique, their performances were analyzed in detail. The results showed that the GZNWAs UV PD exhibited an excellent response to 365 nm light, its response time (T-r), decay time (T-d), responsivity (R-lambda), sensitivity (S), detectivity (D*) and external quantum efficiency (EQE) were 9.8 s, 45.8 s, 72.8 A/W at 5 V, 747.8 at 0 V, 5.5 x 10(12) Jones and 2.5 x 10(4)%, respectively. By comparison, the performances of GZNWAs UV PD were much better than those of ZNWAs UV PD, we found that Ga doping played a key role on improving the performances of ZNWAs-based UV PDs

Automated summary

This article presents the fabrication and analysis of low-cost ultraviolet photodetectors with high performance. The response of gallium-doped ZNWAs UV PD to 365 nm light was found to be excellent.