Microwave assisted synthesis of ZnO and Pd-ZnO nanospheres for UV photodetector

Abstract An ultraviolet photodetector is fabricated with high photoconductive gain, K = 56.3 using ZnO and Palladium doped ZnO Nanospheres (ZnO/Pd-ZnO). The Nanospheres are synthesized using Microwave assisted method. Photoconducting characteristics of the spheres are investigated at 5 V using an UV LED (λ = 395 nm, Optical power = 400 μW). This study define the point defects states especially oxygen vacancy (V o ) and Zinc vacancy (V Zn ) corroborating to the Photoconducting characteristics using photoluminescence spectra. The achieved best response and recovery associated to high photoconductive gain are 3.9 s and 5.27 s at room temperature. Compared to the conventional photodetectors which uses multi-junction structures and associated lithographic process, here cost effective, single step lithography is highlighted.