Developing Seedless Growth of ZnO Micro/Nanowire Arrays towards ZnO/FeS(2)/CuI P-I-N Photodiode Application

A seedless hydrothermal method is developed to grow high density and vertically aligned ZnO micro/nanowire arrays with low defect density on metal films under the saturated nutrition solution. In particular, the mechanism of seedless method is discussed here. A buffer layer can be confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which may release the elastic strain between ZnO and substrate to achieve this highly mismatched heteroepitaxial structures. Based on ZnO micro/nanowire arrays with excellent wettability surface, we prepared ZnO-FeS(2)-CuI p-i-n photodiode by all-solution processed method with the high rectifying ratio of 197 at ±1 V. Under AM 1.5 condition, the J(sc) of 0.5 mA/cm(2), on-off current ratio of 371 and fast photoresponse at zero bias voltage were obtained. This good performance comes from excellent collection ability of photogenerated electrons and holes due to the increased depletion layer width for p-i-n structure. Finally, the high responsivity around 900 nm shows the potential as near infrared photodetectors applications.