Highly Responsive Gold Nanorods/Zinc Oxide Photodetector by Enhancement of Local Surface Plasmons

Abstract UV photodetector performances are enhanced by the local surface plasma resonance originated by the gold nanorods, thus greatly enhancing light scattering capability, and also enhances the near-band emission of ZnO and suppresses defect emission by the gold nanorods. The gold nanorods decorated ZnO films demonstrated enhanced UV responsivity of 180.3 A/W and EQE of 612.59, more than 9 times in enhancement, while the sensitivity was increased to 167. The high responsivity is mainly due to the process of generation and injection of hot electrons at Schottky junction interface, as well as the charge depletion zone with a built-in electric field. This study demonstrates a simple way to obtain high-performance UV photodetectors by decorating a wide bandgap semiconductor material with the gold nanorods.