Zinc oxide/copper oxide heterogeneous nanowire preparation and application in UV Sensor

In this paper, we investigate the hydrothermal synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO)/ copper oxide (CuO) heterojunction nanostructures. Uniform ZnO nanowires are grown on ITO slides with the sophisticated hydrothermal approach. By changing the anions in the copper ion source solution, different CuO structures are grown on ZnO nanowires. With copper chloride as reactant, spike-like structure is obtained. While leaf like structure is grown when copper nitrate is used. Copper sulfate leads to CuO nanobelt. And copper acetate results into similar structure with copper chloride. Then, the application of the heterogeneous nanostructure in UV light sensing is tested. Furthermore, single ZnO/CuO heterojunction nanowire is assembled between the electrodes to fabricate single nanowire based P-N junction.