An ultrahigh responsivity self-powered solar-blind photodetector based on a centimeter-sized β-Ga2O3/polyaniline heterojunction

Abstract

Wide band gap semiconductors are promising UV photodetector materials due to their suitable bandgap, high crystal quality, strong absorption and large carrier mobility. Up to now, deep UV photodetectors are mainly based on epitaxial thin films, which have some undesired properties such as p-type doping difficulty. Lattice mismatch hinders the further development of these devices. Here, a high performance self-powered solar-blind UV photodetector was realized by a facile combination of a centimeter-sized single crystal β-Ga₂O₃ microwire and polyaniline. Owing to the excellent organic/inorganic hybrid p–n junction, the device shows an ultrahigh responsivity of 21 mA W⁻¹ at 246 nm with a sharp cut-off wavelength of 272 nm without an external power supply. Moreover, the dark current is 0.08 pA, which is smaller than those of almost all the previous metallic oxide based solar-blind UV photodetectors. The photodetector also shows a high UV/visible rejection ratio (10²) at zero bias voltage. Finally, a physical model of the self-powered photodetector is also proposed. This work provides a simple, low-cost, and effective method for preparing high performance self-powered solar-blind UV photodetectors based on organic/inorganic heterojunctions.