Ultraviolet (UV) photodetector has found extensive applications, ranging from optical communication to ozone sensing. Wide bandgap metal oxide heterostructures have gained significant interest in the development of UV photodetectors due to their excellent electronic and optical properties, as well as ease of fabrication. However, there are surface and interface issues at these heterostructures that have detrimental effects on device perfor-mance. In this work, UV photodetector consisting of p-NiO/SiO2/n-ZnO heterostructure was prepared by RF magnetron sputtering method. The device exhibited remarkable performances, such as having a rectification ratio of 57, responsivity (R) of 5.77 AW-1, external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 1.96 x 103% and rise time of 0.048 s at a low power consumption of-0.1 V under 365 nm UV irradiation. This work demonstrated a method for low-cost fabrication of photodetectors with rectification behavior and at low power consumption.

SnOx thin films with tunable optical bandgap were prepared using RF magnetron sputtering. The bandgap was adjustable between 2.16 and 3.96 eV depending on oxygen partial pressure during deposition and heat treatment. The structure and properties of the SnOx films were studied. The optical absorption of the SnOx films covered multiple ultraviolet bands, such as UVA, UVB and UVC. A photodetector based on the annealed SnOx film exhibited a detectivity of 1 x 10(11) Jones (under 365 nm UV light) at room temperature, which demonstrates the important potential application of SnOx films for UV detection.

Ultraviolet (UV) photodetector has attracted extensive interests due to its wide-ranging applications from defense technology to optical communications. The use of wide bandgap metal oxide semiconductor materials is of great interest in the development of UV photodetector due to their unique electronic and optical properties. In this work, deep UV photodetector based on NiO/β-Ga2O3 heterojunction was developed and investigated. The β-Ga2O3 layer was prepared by magnetron sputtering and exhibited selective orientation along the family of ($$ \overline{2} $$ 01) crystal plane after annealing. The photodetector demonstrated good performance with a high responsivity (R) of 27.43 AW−1 under a 245-nm illumination (27 μWcm−2) and the maximum detectivity (D*) of 3.14 × 1012 cmHz1/2 W−1, which was attributed to the p-NiO/n-β-Ga2O3 heterojunction.