Optically transparent and electrically conductive indium-tin-oxide nanowires for transparent photodetectors

Single crystalline indium-tin-oxide (ITO) nanowires (NWs) were grown by sputtering method. A thin Ni film of 5 nm was coated before ITO sputtering. Thermal treatment forms Ni nanoparticles, which act as templates to diffuse Ni into the sputtered ITO layer to grow single crystalline ITO NWs. Highly optical transparent photoelectric devices were realized by using a transparent metal-oxide semiconductor heterojunction by combining of p-type NiO and n-type ZnO. A functional template of ITO nanowires was applied to this transparent heterojunction device to enlarge the light-reactive surface. The ITO NWs/n-ZnO/p-NiO heterojunction device provided a significant high rectification ratio of 275 with a considerably low reverse saturation current of 0.2 nA. The optical transparency was about 80% for visible wavelengths, however showed an excellent blocking UV light. The nanostructured transparent heterojunction devices were applied for UV photodetectors to show ultra fast photoresponses with a rise time of 8.3 mS and a fall time of 20 ms, respectively. We suggest this transparent and super-performing UV responser can practically applied in transparent electronics and smart window applications.