Nanowire Based Photodetectors: Growth and Development of Chalcogenide Nanostructured Detectors

This work showcases developments in growth and performance of nanowire (NW) based photodetectors. Specifically the ability to transition from single NW devices to device arrays will be discussed. We have demonstrated the growth of semiconducting nanowires (NWs) using the physical vapor transport (PVT) method. CdSe and ZnSe NWs were grown and showed promising optical properties, including high transparency and a high ratio of band edge/deep level defect emission in photoluminescence (PL) measurements. Metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) structures were fabricated from an array of ZnSe NWs, which showed an average increase of 10x in photocurrent and up to 720x for an individual device.