Role of Optimized Grooves Surface-Textured Front Glass in Improving TiO₂Thin-Film UV Photodetector Performance

Abstract

In this paper, the impact of the surface-textured front glass on the absorption of TiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> /glass thin-film ultraviolet (UV) photodetector is investigated, in order to achieve the dual role of increasing the scattering of UV-light as well as reducing the refracting UV-light in the glass. The efficient control of these phenomena may lead to more electric field confinement and UV-light trapping in TiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> absorber layer. Moreover, semianalytical modeling combined with particle swarm optimization is carried out for studying and enhancing the metal-semiconductor-metal photodetector optical and electrical performances. The results obtained from our semianalytical investigation are validated by comparison with the experimental data. It is found that the absorbance increases significantly by about 51% in optimized design over the planar structure, which is expected to improve the photodetector figures of merit. In this context, photodetector with optimized grooves texturization exhibits a 341% improvement, in terms of responsivity, in comparison with the planar structure and 275% improvement with respect to the textured device without optimization. The obtained results make the proposed design methodology a promising alternative for high-performance optoelectronic applications.