The surface effect on the photodetection of metal oxide nanostructures acting as a double-edged sword achieves ultrahigh photogain but unavoidably prolongs the response time due to slow oxygen adsorption/desorption processes. In this study, we break the compromise to enhance the UV photogain by 3 orders of magnitude as well as increase the photoresponse speed by 5 times via incorporating opencircuit p−n nanoscale heterojunctions (NHJs) by forming single-crystalline p-NiO nanoparticles on n-ZnO nanowires. This is because the formation of NHJs enhances surface band bending of ZnO nanowires, improving the spatial separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes, and passivates the ZnO surfaces by minimizing the interaction of photocarriers with chemisorbed oxygen molecules. The concept using NHJs explores a new pathway toward ultrafast and supersensitive photodetection.
This paper proposes an obliquely aligned InN nanorod array to maximize nanorod deformation in the application of nanopiezotronics. The surface-dependent piezotronic I-V characteristics of the InN nanorod array with exposed polar (0002) and semipolar ( ̅1102) planes were studied by conductive atomic force microscopy. The effects of the piezopotential, created in the InN under straining, and the surface quantum states on the transport behavior of charge carriers in different crystal planes of the InN nanorod were investigated. The crystal plane-dependent electron density in the electron surface accumulation layer and the strain-dependent piezopotential distribution modulate the interfacial contact of the Schottky characteristics for the (0002) plane and the quasi-ohmic behavior for the ( ̅1102) plane. Regarding the piezotronic properties under applied forces, the Schottky barrier height increases in conjunction with the deflection force with high current density at large biases because of tunneling. The strain-induced piezopotential can thus tune the transport process of the charge carriers inside the InN nanorod over a larger range than in ZnO. The quantized surface electron accumulation layer is demonstrated to modulate the piezopotential-dependent carrier transport at the metal/InN interfaces and become an important factor in the design of InN-based piezotronic devices and nanogenerators.
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