An ultraviolet photodetector based on conductive hydrogenated TiO$_2$ film prepared by radio frequency atmospheric pressure plasma

Abstract

The growing demand for real-time ultraviolet (UV) monitoring calls for a simple, rapid, and low-cost strategy to prepare UV photodetectors. We prepare a wearable real-time UV photodetector based on hydrogenated titanium dioxide film synthesized by radio frequency atmospheric pressure plasma. The conductivity of our hydrogenated titanium dioxide is improved to 10.2 S cm$^{-1}$, 9 orders of magnitude higher than that of pristine titanium dioxide after 10 min plasma treatment. Plasma hydrogenation disrupts the surface crystal structure, introducing oxygen vacancies (OVs) that create self-doped titanium(III) and titanium (II) species. First-principles calculations indicate the OVs raise the Fermi level of TiO$_2$ and distort the lattice nearby. Our optimized film has a distinctive periodic switching characteristic under intermittent illumination and good responsivity from 280 - 400 nm, peaking at 632.35 mA W^{-1}$ at 365 nm. The fabricated wearable sensor based on the optimized film effectively performs the monitoring of the daily variation of ambient UV intensity in three typical weather types and transferring its data to a smartphone via Wi-Fi.