Published In

Nanoscale Research Letters

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-8-2013

Subjects

Ultraviolet detectors -- Design and construction, Heterojunctions, Electron transport

Abstract

ZnO nanoneedle arrays were grown vertically on a fluorine-doped tin oxide-coated glass by hydrothermal method at a relatively low temperature. A self-powered photoelectrochemical cell-type UV detector was fabricated using the ZnO nanoneedles as the active photoanode and H2O as the electrolyte. This solid-liquid heterojunction offers an enlarged ZnO/water contact area and a direct pathway for electron transport simultaneously. By connecting this UV photodetector to an ammeter, the intensity of UV light can be quantified using the output short-circuit photocurrent without a power source. High photosensitivity, excellent spectral selectivity, and fast photoresponse at zero bias are observed in this UV detector. The self-powered behavior can be well explained by the formation of a space charge layer near the interface of the solid-liquid heterojunction, which results in a built-in potential and makes the solid-liquid heterojunction work in photovoltaic mode.

Description

Copyright 2013 Li et al.; licensee Springer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1556-276X-8-415

DOI

10.1186/1556-276X-8-415

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10206

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