Low-cost photodetector architectures fabricated at room-temperature using nano-engineered silicon wafer and sol-gel TiO(2) – based heterostructures

In the last decades, significant research has been done on the nanocrystalline forms of titanium dioxide (TiO(2)). Amorphous TiO(2) has not been studied intensively despite being significantly less expensive compared to crystalline TiO(2). This study reveals significant improvement in UV-VIS photodetection properties from heterostructures fabricated in ambient environment using n-type silicon nanowire arrays and amorphous TiO(2) sol-gel. Our ultra-low-cost UV-VIS photodetectors can cover a wide range of applications. We report fast rise/decay time constants of 0.23 ms/0.17 ms and high responsivity up-to 6.0 A/W in the UV and 25.0 A/W in the visible range under low (1 V) external bias. The large surface area due to the nanowire array architecture leads to 2 orders of magnitude enhancement in photo-response. Besides the final electrode deposition, the entire device fabrication is performed using low-cost, all solution-based methods in ambient conditions. These low-cost UV-Visible broadband photodetectors can potentially serve a wide range of applications.