Research Projects

In recent years, the Internet of Things technology is overgrowing. In this regard, our main challenge is to develop smart, intelligent, eco-friendly, less power-consumed, cost-effective, and highly sustainable optoelectronic devices and sensors for the next generation. Due to their wide range of applications, photodetectors have gained tremendous consideration as an important class of optoelectronic devices since they convert an incident optical signal into an electrical signal. From the wide spectral range of electromagnetic radiation, UV radiation is highly significant radiation because it strongly influences organic and inorganic life. However, due to the strong absorption of UV radiation below 280 nm by the ozone layer, this solar UV radiation cannot reach the earth's surface. Therefore, a UV photodetector must be used to monitor the UV radiation, which transforms UV signals into measurable electrical quantities. On the other hand, due to their potential applications in new electronic technologies, flexible and wearable optoelectronic devices have received wide attention. The development of highly flexible UV solar-blind photodetector devices will become a significant area for researchers. Flexible UV photodetectors are good for portable electronic devices, gadgets, and other applications since they are deformable and low-cost. β-Ga₂O₃ has been identified as one of the potential candidate materials due to its low cost and wide band gap (4.9 eV), which make it an attractive candidate for the optoelectronic industry. Although flexible devices generally have low glass transition temperatures, typically 80 to 150 °C, they do not allow for high maximum working temperatures. Therefore, it is necessary to find flexible Ga₂O₃ solar-blind UV photodetectors that can withstand high temperatures, are low in cost, and can provide high-quality photodetectors for wearables and smart skin. Nevertheless, the ongoing development in wearable skin devices has opened the doors for another viewpoint in the field of next-generation flexible optoelectronic devices. In addition to the ability to twist, extend, pack, bend, and distorted into non-planar shapes, the flexible photodetectors are compatible with conventional metal electrodes and maintain good performance. Hence, we proposed a new innovative cost-effective self-power solar-blind UV photodetectors based on β-Ga₂O₃ thin film p-n heterojunctions. Here, we have chosen two kinds of metal oxides NiO and Cu₂O as p-type, and for n-type is β-Ga₂O₃ to construct the p-n heterojunction. The goal of the proposed project is to fabricate the high crystal quality of p-type Cu₂O/n-type β-Ga₂O₃ and p-type NiO/n-type β-Ga₂O₃ self-powered photodetectors on mica substrates using cost-effective sol-gel spin coating technique and enhance the UV photodetector figure of merits like responsivity, response speed under zero bias, external quantum efficiency, detectivity, and UV to visible rejection ratio.