High-performance ultraviolet photodetector based on CuO/ZnO composite nanowire forest heterojunction fabricated by combined glancing angle deposition and magnetron sputtering

Abstract

This study uses a combination of glancing-angle deposition (GLAD) and magnetron sputtering to design and fabricate three-dimensional Cu/CuO x -ZnO nanowire forest composite heterojunction thin films, and systematically investigates how ZnO deposition conditions on device performance. The results show that a ZnO deposition time of 20 min yields optimal performance, exhibiting a photocurrent of 69.0 μA, a responsivity of 0.293 A/W, and a specific detectivity of 5.14 × 10 10 Jones under a 5 V bias and 365 nm illumination. These performances are generally superior to single-component films (i.e. Si/CuO x and Si/ZnO) and previously reported nanowire heterojunction detectors. The excellent UV photodetection performance is attributed to the high specific surface area of the nanowire forest and the optimized CuO/ZnO heterointerface, which enable strong spectral absorption, efficient carrier separation, and effective suppression of photogenerated carrier recombination. This study provides important insight for the optimization of nanowire structures in UV photodetectors and offers a feasible solution for improving the detection efficiency, scalable fabrication, and the practical application of high-performance photodetectors.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Optical Materials, 2026 · DOI ↗