Flexible visible-light photodetectors were fabricated by dispersing a large number of Sb ₂ Se ₃ nanowires onto the Au interdigitated electrodes on PET substrates, which showed fast response speed and excellent flexibility.

It is essential to modulate materials and their interfaces for excellent device performance. Here, an ultraviolet (UV) photodetector (PD) based on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/ZnO/MgZnO heterojunction was successfully fabricated at room temperature. The piezophototronic effect was first used to modulate the transport behavior of the photogenerated carriers at the interface of the MgZnO/ZnO heterojunction. The responsivity increased from 0.23 to 0.95 A W⁻¹ with the increase in external tensile strain from 0 to 0.18, an increase of ∼313%. Meanwhile, with the decrease in external compressive strain from 0 to −0.18, the responsivity decreased by ∼63%. This is owing to the modulation of the junction barrier and photogenerated carrier transport behavior at the MgZnO/ZnO junctions/interfaces via the piezophototronic effect. Moreover, the PD maintained excellent mechanical stability and reproducibility after different bending cycles 0/50/100/150/200 and excellent environmental stability after storage for over two months, which are beneficial for its practical applications. Furthermore, this study developed a method for modulating the performance of UV PDs, and showed that the piezophototronic effect has important theoretical significance and application prospect for the modulation of heterojunction interfaces.

The light trapping effect of zinc oxide (ZnO) ultraviolet photodetectors (UV PDs) has been established as a promising way to optimize the performance of optoelectronic devices. In this paper, we report a light trapping fabricated metal–semiconductor–metal structure, consisting of a ZnO nanowire array as a top layer light absorber supported by a ZnO film. The ZnO film is bridged between two interdigitated metal electrodes for collecting photo-generated carriers. In this connection, high-dense ZnO nanowires can be used as a light trapping unit and to transmit the photogenerated carriers towards the ZnO film. The photogenerated carriers diffuse along the longitudinal direction of the ZnO nanowire and then to the ZnO film and are collected by the applied bias electrode. Compared to present ZnO thin film UV PDs, our device has an effective light trapping effect and the enhancement of photo-generated carriers at the top interface by a ZnO nanowire array structure are highly beneficial to UV light detection as they can provide a long optical path and more surface area. In addition, when the device was connected with nanowires, a 10 times augment of responsivity appeared accompanied by a giant photo-to-dark current ratio (1.6 × 10 ³ ). This novel work not only enhanced fundamental improvement of nanowires to ZnO film UV PDs, but also provided a distinct contrast between light trapping UV PDs and ZnO film UV PDs.