Plasmonic assisted enhanced photoresponse of metal nanoparticle loaded ZnO thin film ultraviolet photodetectors

An ultraviolet (UV) photodetector exhibiting enhanced response characteristics has been realized successfully after integrating various metal nanoparticles (NPs) such as silver (Ag), gold (Au) and platinum (Pt) with sol–gel derived ZnO thin film (NPs–ZnO). The metal NP based photodetector (Ag, Au, Pt-NPs–ZnO) exhibits a relatively high photoresponse in comparison to the bare ZnO based UV photodetector and gives a maximum value of about 4.27 × 103. The combined effect of the lowering of dark current due to the formation of a Schottky barrier at the interface of the metal NPs with the ZnO thin film and the photocurrent upon UV illumination due to the plasmonic effect of loaded NPs results in an enhanced photoresponse of the prepared metal NP–ZnO photodetector. The trapping of incident UV radiation mainly through the enhanced optical absorption by loaded metal NPs due to the plasmonic effect and subsequent coupling of harvesting photons into underlying optical modes of the surface of photoconducting ZnO thin films lead to a significant increase in photocurrent. The observed results provide an indication that the plasmonic assisted UV response of the novel metal NP–ZnO photodetector might provide a breakthrough for the development of next generation photodetectors.