Performance of Ultraviolet Photodetectors Based on Hydrothermal Pristine and V-Doped ZnO Nanoflowers

In this study, a simple and low-cost hydrothermal technique was used to synthesize pristine and different vanadium (V)-doped ZnO nanoflowers, and the ratios of V/Zn were 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 at.%, respectively. The crystal structure and morphology of all the samples were investigated by XRD, SEM and TEM, respectively. XRD analyses displayed that they were ZnO with pure hexagonal wurtzite structure. SEM results revealed that they were all flower-like nanostructures assembled with many ZnO nanorods. Furthermore, five UV photodetectors were established using the pristine and V-doped ZnO nanoflowers as photosensitive layers, and their performances were evaluated in detail. Among these devices, 1% V-doped ZnO nanoflowers UV photodetector had the optimal performance, and its responsivity and detectivity were up to 107.96 A/W and 3.29 × 10¹³ Jones, respectively. This work paves a way for achieving high-performance ZnO UV photodetectors.