Sustainable materials engineering of plasmonic Al–ZnO nanostructures for CMOS-compatible and reliable deep-UV photodetection

DUV photodiectors are important in environmental and flame monitoring, secure communication channels, and biomedical equipment. The practical application involves high sensitivity and long-term stability which has to be ensured along with CMOS compatibility. This still remains an unsolved issue in the scientific community. The present DUV photodetectors based on GaN and β-Ga₂O₃ always have the problems of high fabrication cost, large dark current, limited noise control, and poor scalability. Though devices are based on ZnO which is low in cost; generally, instability, high noise with no systematic validation on lifetime prevails results reported mainly focus only responsivity while endurance has been completely ignored together with noise equivalent power as well as long term degradation behavior. A CMOS-compatible DUV photodetector based on aluminum nanoparticle–integrated ZnO Nano rods is proposed. Plasmonic aluminum nanoparticles are employed to enhance deep-UV absorption while preserving manufacturability and device robustness. Compared with previously reported Au- and Ag-assisted ZnO plasmonic photodetectors, the proposed Al–ZnO device offers a more application-oriented deep-UV platform by integrating CMOS-compatible low-cost materials with enhanced deep-UV selectivity, low-noise detection capability, and experimentally verified robustness. Its sensitivity and stability characteristics make it stand out among the GaN or β-Ga₂O₃ photodetectors while being highly CMOS compatible. The fabricated device achieves a peak responsivity of 2.4 A/W at 265 nm, with an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 96%, Detectivity at 1.0 × 10¹¹ Jones and ultra-low level light LoD = 0.55 µW·cm⁻² accompanied by minimum = 1 0.5 × 10 ⁻¹⁵ W·Hz ⁻½. Medium-term reliability testing confirmed > 95% responsivity retention after 200 h of continuous UV-C exposure under ambient conditions, while dynamic endurance testing up to 10⁵ ON/OFF switching cycles demonstrated only nominal performance degradation. Using Arrhenius analysis, an activation energy was calculated of 0.183 eV and a half-life on the order of 8 × 10³ h could be predicted. Results establish plasmonic Al–ZnO photodetectors as highly reliable low noise scalable platform suitable towards next generation deep UV sensing applications. The practical experiments and optical, electrical, and thermal real-time performance characterizations were conducted at the Nanotechnology Laboratory of the Scientific Research Authority using calibrated instruments. This fact raises confidence in the validation of simulated results by comparison under controlled laboratory conditions.