Abstract

High-performance photodetectors were fabricated using drop-casting method, employing pure CuO, Fe3O4 and CuO@Fe3O4 nanocomposite (NC). These devices aim to achieve enhanced responsivity (R), photosensitivity (Ps), detectivity (D*), and external quantum efficiency (EQE). The XRD results indicate that the crystallite size of the CuO@Fe3O4 NC was reduced to around 20 nm, compared to 23 nm for pure CuO and 25 nm for pure Fe3O4. In addition, phase purity and functional groups were corroborated by Raman and FTIR analysis, supporting these findings. The bandgap energy of pure CuO and Fe3O4 was estimated to be around 1.25 and 1.22 eV, respectively, while the CuO@Fe3O4 NC exhibited a lower bandgap energy of 1.13 eV due to the interface between CuO and Fe3O4. Notably, the fabricated CuO@Fe3O4/n-Si photodiode exhibited excellent rectification properties under illumination, with an ideality factor (n) of 2.87 and a barrier height (Phi B) of 0.83 eV. The device achieved high Ps of 773.4 %, R of 542.6 mA/W, EQE of 208.7 %, and D* of 2.91 x 1012 Jones, demonstrating that the CuO@Fe3O4 NC is the most effective material for photodetection in this study.