Fast Decay Time and Low Dark Current Mechanism in TiO2 Ultraviolet Detector

In this letter, TiO₂ thin films were prepared via sol-gel method and metal/semiconductor/metal ultraviolet (UV) detectors with Pt Schottky contact were fabricated. At 5 V bias, the dark current of the device was only 80 pA. Diffusion theory was adopted to analyze the low dark current mechanism, which is consistent with the experimental results. The device shows a remarkably reduced decay time of 41.53 ms. The low dark current and improved time response performance may be attributed to the high effective Schottky barrier between Pt and TiO₂ film. High responsivity of 34.5 A/W was achieved at 300 nm UV light and the ratio of photocurrent to dark current is about five orders of magnitude, which is much larger than that of other semiconductor photodetectors.