Self-driven water or polarized liquid based ultraviolet photodetector

Abstract

Traditionally, photodetector is based on solid materials constructed PN junction, which needs many delicate growth technologies. Herein, we demonstrate the feasibility of polarized liquid triggered photodetector where the liquid is sandwiched between P-type or N-type semiconductor which can be chosen freely according to the requirement of the specific response wavelength. Under the multiple cycles of optical switching, transient photo-polarized current, steady state photo-polarized current and depolarized current are repeatably observed in semiconductor/polar liquids/semiconductor structure. The responsivity and specific detectivity of transient photo-polarized current in N-GaN/water/P-GaN reach values of 104.2 mA/W and 4.4*10^12 Jones at 365 nm, and 52.8 mA/W and 1.9*10^12 Jones at 254 nm illumination under zero voltage bias. We anticipate that our research will have a profound impact on integrating self-powered photodetector with freely selectable wavelength bands.