High-Performance Fully Nanostructured Photodetector with Single-Crystalline CdS Nanotubes as Active Layer and Very Long Ag Nanowires as Transparent Electrodes

Long and single-crystalline CdS nanotubes (NTs) have been prepared via a physical evaporation process. A metal-semiconductor-metal full-nanostructured photodetector with CdS NTs as active layer and Ag nanowires (NWs) of low resistivity and high transmissivity as electrodes has been fabricated and characterized. The CdS NTs-based photodetectors exhibit high performance, such as lowest dark currents (0.19 nA) and high photoresponse ratio (Ilight/Idark ≈ 4016) (among CdS nanostructure network photodetectors and NTs netwok photodetectors reported so far) and very low operation voltages (0.5 V). The photoconduction mechanism, including the formation of a Schottky barrier at the interface of Ag NW and CdS NTs and the effect of oxygen adsorption process on the Schottky barrier has also been provided in detail based on the studies of CdS NTs photodetector in air and vacuum. Furthermore, CdS NTs photodetector exhibits an enhanced photosensitivity as compared with CdS NWs photodetector. The enhancement in performance is dependent on the larger surface area of NTs adsorbing more oxygen in air and the microcavity structure of NTs with higher light absorption efficiency and external quantum efficiency. It is believed that CdS NTs can potentially be useful in the designs of 1D CdS-based optoelectronic devices and solar cells.