Search Results (3)

This study investigates the effects of varying indium tin oxide (ITO) layer thicknesses and the patterning of the ITO layer on the growth of metallic gold (Au) nano- and microstructures on titanium dioxide (TiO₂) templates. The ITO-TiO₂ heterojunction serves to collect photogenerated electrons in the ITO sublayer, facilitating their transport to the pattern edges and concentrating photocatalytic activity at these edges. Six template types were fabricated on glass substrates, with systematic variations in ITO thickness (0, 3, 6, 10, and 30 nm) and different ITO patterning methods (either continuous or patterned with the TiO₂ layer). Photocatalytic gold growth was carried out on each of the substrates, and morphological analysis was conducted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results showed that a 6 nm ITO layer beneath a 70 nm TiO₂ layer yielded the most uniform gold lines, characterized by 3D flower-shaped structures and enhanced edge growth. Conductance measurements indicated a value of 23 mS, suggesting potential applications in bio-inspired electronics. These findings provide insights into optimizing gold structure growth for advanced neuromorphic devices. Full article

Self-powered photodetectors are of significance for the development of low-energy-consumption and environment-friendly Internet of Things. The performance of semiconductor-based self-powered photodetectors is limited by the low quality of junctions. Here, a novel strategy was proposed for developing high-performance self-powered photodetectors with boosted electrostatic potential. The proposed self-powered ultraviolet (UV) photodetector consisted of an indium tin oxide and titanium dioxide (ITO/TiO₂) heterojunction and an electret film (poly tetra fluoroethylene, PTFE). The PTFE layer introduces a built-in electrostatic field to highly enhance the photovoltaic effect, and its high internal resistance greatly reduces the dark current, and thus remarkable performances were achieved. The self-powered UV photodetector with PTFE demonstrated an extremely high on–off ratio of 2.49 × 10⁵, a responsivity of 76.87 mA/W, a response rise time of 7.44 ms, and a decay time of 3.75 ms. Furthermore, the device exhibited exceptional stability from room temperature to 70 °C. Compared with the conventional ITO/TiO₂ heterojunction without the PTFE layer, the photoresponse of the detector improved by 442-fold, and the light–dark ratio was increased by 8.40 × 10⁵ times. In addition, the detector is simple, easy to fabricate, and low cost. Therefore, it can be used on a large scale. The electrostatic modulation effect is universal for various types of semiconductor junctions and is expected to inspire more innovative applications in optoelectronic and microelectronic devices. Full article

In this work we study the optical properties of one-dimensional photonic crystals in which layers of silica nanoparticles are alternated with layers of indium tin oxide nanoparticle (ITO)/titania nanoparticle mixture, using the transfer matrix method. The dielectric function of the mixed ITO/TiO₂ nanoparticle layer is carefully accounted for with a generalized Rayleigh equation for the ternary mixture ITO:TiO₂:air. We studied the light transmission of the multilayer photonic crystal as a function of the ITO/TiO₂ ratio. We observe that, by increasing the ITO content and its carrier density in the three-phase mixture, the intensity of the plasmon resonance in the near infrared (NIR) increases and the intensity of the photonic band gap (visible) decreases. Thus, our study is of major importance for the realization of electrochromic smart windows, in which separate and independent NIR and visible light control is required. Full article