Visible-blind and flexible metal-semiconductor-metal ultraviolet photodetectors based on sub-10-nm thick silver...

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a distinct visible-blind and flexible metal-semiconductor-metal ultraviolet (UV) photodetector (PD) based on sub-10-nm thick silver interdigital electrodes. The transparent PD with 7-nm thick electrodes shows enhanced visible transmittance (80%) in average and achieves greatly improved responsivity (60.5 mA/W), and detectivity (1.75×10¹⁰ Jones) at 5 V under 380-nm illumination, compared with its opaque counterpart. It is as fast as the opaque PD with short rise and fall times (22.4 and 11.5 ms) and shows good flexibility. All the properties are comparable or superior to many reported transparent UV PDs, mainly attributed to the broad high UV-visible transmittance and the high conductivity of the ultrathin silver film.