ZnO nanowire (NW) visible-blind UV photodetectors with internal photoconductive gain as high as G ∼ 10 8 have been fabricated and characterized. The photoconduction mechanism in these devices has been elucidated by means of time-resolved measurements spanning a wide temporal domain, from 10 -9 to 10 2 s, revealing the coexistence of fast (τ ∼ 20 ns) and slow (τ ∼ 10 s) components of the carrier relaxation dynamics. The extremely high photoconductive gain is attributed to the presence of oxygen-related hole-trap states at the NW surface, which prevents charge-carrier recombination and prolongs the photocarrier lifetime, as evidenced by the sensitivity of the photocurrrent to ambient conditions. Surprisingly, this mechanism appears to be effective even at the shortest time scale investigated of t < 1 ns. Despite the slow relaxation time, the extremely high internal gain of ZnO NW photodetectors results in gain-bandwidth products (GB) higher than ∼10 GHz. The high gain and low power consumption of NW photodetectors promise a new generation of phototransistors for applications such as sensing, imaging, and intrachip optical interconnects.Because of its wide band gap (E g ) 3.4 eV), low cost, and ease of manufacturing, ZnO is emerging as a potential alternative to GaN in optoelectronic applications, 1 including light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, and photodetectors for the UV spectral range. In the past decade, the demonstration of a large variety of functional ZnO nanowire (NW) devices such as field effect transistors, 2,3 optically pumped lasers, 4,5 and chemical and biological sensors 6 have aroused growing interest in this material. 7 In particular, ZnO NW photodetectors and optical switches have been the subject of extensive investigations. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Despite the abundant research on NW photoconduction, 19 the two main factors contributing to the high photosensitivity of such nanostructures have been scarcely recognized: (1) the large surface-to-volume ratio and the presence of deep level surface trap states in NWs greatly prolongs the photocarrier lifetime; (2) the reduced dimensionality of the active area in NW devices shortens the carrier transit time. Indeed, the combination of long lifetime and short transit time of charge carriers can result in substantial photoconductive gain. [20][21][22] In this letter, we present ZnO NW photodetectors with large photoresponse; upon UV illumination at relatively low light intensities (I ∼ 10 µW/cm 2 ), the current in ZnO NWs increases by several orders of magnitude, which translates to a photoconductive gain of G > 10 8 . To elucidate the photoconduction mechanism that involves fast carrier thermalization and trapping at the NW surface and electronhole recombination at extended and localized states, we have studied the photoconductivity of ZnO NWs by time-resolved measurements and in different ambient conditions (e.g., in air or under vacuum). A physical model was developed to illustrate the origin of the photoconductive gain in ...

We report, for the first time, the synthesis of the high-quality p-type ZnO NWs using a simple chemical vapor deposition method, where phosphorus pentoxide has been used as the dopant source. Single-crystal phosphorus doped ZnO NWs have their growth axis along the 001 direction and form perfect vertical arrays on a-sapphire. P-type doping was confirmed by photoluminescence measurements at various temperatures and by studying the electrical transport in single NWs field-effect transistors. Comparisons of the low-temperature PL of unintentionally doped ZnO (n-type), as-grown phosphorus-doped ZnO, and annealed phosphorus-doped ZnO NWs show clear differences related to the presence of intragap donor and acceptor states. The electrical transport measurements of phosphorus-doped NW FETs indicate a transition from n-type to p-type conduction upon annealing at high temperature, in good agreement with the PL results. The synthesis of p-type ZnO NWs enables novel complementary ZnO NW devices and opens up enormous opportunities for nanoscale electronics, optoelectronics, and medicines.

Single-crystal InAs nanowires (NWs) are synthesized using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and fabricated into NW field-effect transistors (NWFETs) on a SiO(2)/n(+)-Si substrate with a global n(+)-Si back-gate and sputtered SiO(x)/Au underlap top-gate. For top-gate NWFETs, we have developed a model that allows accurate estimation of characteristic NW parameters, including carrier field-effect mobility and carrier concentration by taking into account series and leakage resistances, interface state capacitance, and top-gate geometry. Both the back-gate and the top-gate NWFETs exhibit room-temperature field-effect mobility as high as 6580 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1), which is the lower-bound value without interface-capacitance correction, and is the highest mobility reported to date in any semiconductor NW.

Epitaxial growth of vertical GaAs nanowires on Si(111) substrates is demonstrated by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition via a vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism. Systematic experiments indicate that substrate pretreatment, pregrowth alloying temperature, and growth temperature are all crucial to vertical epitaxial growth. Nanowire growth rate and morphology can be well controlled by the growth temperature, the metal-organic precursor molar fraction, and the molar V/III ratio. The as-grown GaAs nanowires have a predominantly zinc-blende crystal structure along a <111> direction. Crystallographic {111} stacking faults found perpendicular to the growth axis could be almost eliminated via growth at high V/III ratio and low temperature. Single nanowire field effect transistors based on unintentionally doped GaAs nanowires were fabricated and found to display a strong effect of surface states on their transport properties.