We report on the photoelectric properties of n-ZnO/p-Si photodiodes which detect UV photons in the depleted n-ZnO and simultaneously detect visible photons in the depleted p-Si. As characterized by I–V measurements in the photon range of 310 to 650 nm our photodiodes exposed to UV photons show a linear increase in photocurrent with reverse bias. In the visible range, the photocurrent rises rapidly with bias but saturates beyond a critical voltage. Our diodes exhibit strong responsivities of 0.5 and 0.3 A/W for UV (310-nm) and red (650-nm) photons, respectively, under a 30-V bias with a weak minimum near 380 nm, the wavelength corresponding to the band gap of ZnO. It is concluded that our n-ZnO/p-Si diode can be a UV-enhanced photodiode that simultaneously detects UV and visible photons by employing two related photoelectric mechanisms in parallel.

We report on the fabrication of a heterojunction photodiode for the visible range that consists of a transparent insulating ZnO overlayer and a transparent semiconducting n-ZnO layer on p-Si. For device isolation, we implanted Si+ ions into the n-ZnO layer. We have obtained a wide-range spectral responsivity curve for our isolated photodiodes, which showed a maximum quantum efficiency of 70% at 650 nm and a minimum of 10% at 420 nm. However, they exhibited an efficiency drop at 380 nm in the near-ultraviolet because the ZnO layers absorbed the photons of higher energy before they reached p-Si. The ion-beam-induced isolation considerably reduced dark leakage currents in our devices when the dose of Si ions was as high as 5×1015 cm−2.

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