Abstract
The growth of crack-free nanostructured NiO films with good crystalline quality is of high importance for photodetectors to avoid performance failure. In this work, physical properties of spin coated NiO films were controlled by changing diethanolamine (DEA) to nickel acetate (NiAc) molar ratio (0:1-1:1) and post annealing temperature (300-650 degrees C). NiO film coated at DEA:NiAc molar ratio of 0:1 suffered from severe cracks and poor crystallinity, and by increasing the molar ratio to 1:1 a crack-free NiO with enhanced grain growth was obtained. With the increase of annealing temperature from 300 C to 600 degrees C, the crystallite size increased from 12.79 to 37.31 nm, and the bandgap decreased from 3.81 to 3.42 eV, indicating an enhancement in NiO film quality. A self-powered photodetector based on p-NiO/n-Si heterojunction showed broadband (UV-NIR) photodetection owing to synergistic photoelectric effect from both NiO film and Si substrate. The responsivity, detectivity, and external quantum efficiency were measured as 13.08, 46.02, 44.49, mA/W, 1.03 x 1011, 3.65 x 1011, 3.53 x 1011, Jones, and 4.43%, 8.62%, 6.47% upon illumination with UV (365 nm), red (660 nm), and NIR (850 nm) lights, respectively. The photodetector showed high on/off current ratio of 1.210 x 103 and fast response (less than 85 ms). These findings introduce p-NiO/n-Si heterojunction as a promising candidate for next generation optoelectronics.