High-performance solar-blind (200-280 nm) avalanche photodetectors (APDs) were fabricated based on highly crystallized ZnO-Ga2O3 core-shell microwires. The responsivity can reach up to 1.3 × 10(3) A/W under -6 V bias. Moreover, the corresponding detectivity was as high as 9.91 × 10(14) cm·Hz(1/2)/W. The device also showed a fast response, with a rise time shorter than 20 μs and a decay time of 42 μs. The quality of the detectors in solar-blind waveband is comparable to or even higher than that of commercial Si APD (APD120A2 from Thorlabs Inc.), with a responsivity ∼8 A/W, detectivity ∼10(12) cm·Hz(1/2)/W, and response time ∼20 ns. The high performance of this APD make it highly suitable for practical applications as solar-blind photodetectors, and this core-shell microstructure heterojunction design method would provide a new approach for realizing an APD device.

We demonstrate a novel type of ZnO self-powered photodetector based on the asymmetric metalsemiconductor-metal (MSM) structure: one Au interdigitated electrode with wide fingers and the other one with narrow fingers. These ZnO photodetectors exhibit attractive photovoltaic characteristics at 0 V bias. More interestingly, with increasing the asymmetric ratio (the width of wide fingers : the width of narrow fingers) of the interdigitated electrodes, the responsivity of the ZnO self-powered UV photodetectors was enhanced obviously, reaching as high as 20 mA W À1 when the asymmetric ratio was 20 : 1. A physical model based on band energy theory was developed to illustrate the origin of the photoresponse at 0 V in our device. Our findings provide a new route to realizing self-powered photodetectors.

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