Speakers
Description
UV photodetectors are essential tools in the detection and quantification of UV radiation for a wide array of scientific and practical uses. These applications include disinfection and sterilization, ozone level monitoring, water purification, secure communications system and marine navigation. Thus, UV photodetectors play a key role in a variety of systems spanning health, defense, communication technologies, and space-based platforms, where they enable interference-free communication and high-speed optical pulse detection. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is emerging as promising wide bandgap material for such UV detection applications. It exhibits a wide bandgap, enabling visible-blind UV detection. TiO2 has excellent chemical and thermal stability, low dark current, and rapid photo response. These attributes make TiO2 ideal for developing compact and energy-efficient UV photodetectors suitable for harsh environments. In this work, we present a simple and scalable approach to fabricate TiO2 based photodetectors using the thermal oxidation technique. The film characterizations that we have done include XRD (X-ray diffraction), LRS (Laser Raman spectroscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), and UV-Visible spectroscopy. We have fabricated photodetectors of metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) geometry, with Ti/Au contacts for signal acquisition. We perform electrical characterization through dark current–voltage (IV) measurements and evaluate the device response under a pulsed 266 nm laser with a pulse width of 0.5 ns. The detector shows fast and stable photoconductive behavior under deep UV illumination, demonstrating its suitability for applications in biological monitoring, space-based sensing, and strategic radiation detection.
