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Bidirectional photocurrent in p–n heterojunction nanowires

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 645–652 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Semiconductor p–n junctions provide rectification behaviour and act as building blocks in many electronic devices. However, the typical junction configuration restricts the potential functionalities of devices. Here we report a light-detection electrochemical cell that is based on vertically aligned p-AlGaN/n-GaN p–n heterojunction nanowires in an electrolyte environment. After decorating the nanowires with platinum nanoparticles, the cell exhibits a photoresponse in which the photocurrent polarity is reversed depending on the wavelength of light. In particular, illumination of the device at two different wavelengths (254 nm and 365 nm) triggers different redox reactions at the nanowire/electrolyte interface, inducing polarity reversal of the photocurrent. The device offers a responsivity of up to −175 mA W−1 at 254 nm and 31 mA W−1 at 365 nm, both at 0 V.

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Fig. 1: Design of p-AlGaN/n-GaN nanowires for light-detection electrochemical cell.
Fig. 2: DFT calculations.
Fig. 3: Photodepositon process and structural characterization of nanowires.
Fig. 4: Spectrally distinctive photodetection characterization.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 61905236 and 51961145110), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. WK2100230020), USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (grant no. YD3480002002) and USTC National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (grant no. KY2100000099), and was partially carried out at the USTC Center for Micro and Nanoscale Research and Fabrication. We thank W. Wu from USTC for the support of DFT calculation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Microelectronics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Danhao Wang, Xin Liu, Yang Kang, Shi Fang, Huabin Yu, Muhammad Hunain Memon, Haochen Zhang, Haiding Sun & Shibing Long

  2. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoning Wang & Wei Hu

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Yuanpeng Wu & Zetian Mi

  4. Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Lan Fu

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  1. Danhao Wang
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Contributions

H.S. developed the idea and designed the experiments. D.W., X.L., Y.K., Y.W., S.F., H.Y., M.H.M., H.Z. and Z.M. performed the MBE growth and characterizations, XPS measurement and photodetection experiments, as well as collected and analysed the data. D.W., X.L., Y.K. and S.F. performed Pt nanoparticle decoration and material investigation. X.W. and W.H. conducted and discussed the theoretical calculations. D.W. and H.S performed the aberration-corrected STEM characterization. D.W., L.F., S.L and H.S. co-wrote the paper. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haiding Sun.

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Peer review information Nature Electronics thanks Ya Yang and Daoyou Guo for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10, Note and refs. 1–9.

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Wang, D., Liu, X., Kang, Y. et al. Bidirectional photocurrent in p–n heterojunction nanowires. Nat Electron 4, 645–652 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00640-7

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