TiO₂-graphene composite as an application of photoelectrochemical photodetectors with enhanced performances

Abstract

Ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors have attracted increasing attention in military and civilian fields.In this work, the prepared TiO₂-graphene composite was fabricated by hydrothermal synthesis method and it was used in photoelectrochemical type photodetector for UV detection. The results of the photoelectrochemical measurements demonstrate that the TiO₂-graphene composite have a remarkable enhancement on photoresponse compared to pure TiO₂, which is effectively demonstrate the introduction of graphene will reduce the probability of electron-hole recombination and increase the photocurrent of light detection. In addition, owing to the unique solid-liquid contact mechanism of PEC-type photodetector, it can work under 0 V bias and exhibited excellent photoresponse ability that can reach11uA/W at the UV wavelength of 365 nm. Moreover, the as-prepared TiO₂-graphene composite based photodetector possessed preferable performance with the weak irradiation. Even if the light intensity reduced to 6 mW/cm², the photocurrent density can also reach to 5 uA/cm². With the excellent absorbtion of the UV and remarkable self-powered ability make the TiO₂-graphene composite based PEC-type photodetector have great promising on UV detection field.

Keywords:

• Graphene
• TiO2
• photoelectrochemical
• photodetector

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Grants from the Science and Technology Research Project of Education Department of Jiangxi Province (No. GJJ181485), and Open Fund based on innovation platform of Hunan colleges and universities (No. 19K095).