Photoresponse of hydrothermally grown lateral ZnO nanowires

In this paper, a simple self-assembled lateral growth of ZnO nanowires (NWs) photodetector has been synthesized by a hydrothermal method at a temperature as low as 85 °C. The ZnO NWs exhibit single-crystalline wurtzite with elongated c-axis and can be selectively lateral self-assembled around the edges of ZnO seeding layer. The current of ZnO NWs is sensitive to the variation of ambient pressures, i.e. 4.47 μA was decreased to 1.48 μA with 5 V-bias as 1.1 × 10− 6 Torr changed to 760 Torr, accordingly. Moreover, the current–voltage characteristics of ZnO NWs photodetectors can be evidently distinguished by UV illumination (i.e. λ = 325 nm). The photocurrent of ZnO NWs with UV illumination is twice larger than dark current while the voltage biased at 5 V. Consequently, this faster photoresponse convinces that the hydrothermally grown lateral ZnO NWs devices have a fairly good for the fabrication of UV photodetectors.