Surface oxide effect on optical sensing and photoelectric conversion of α-In2Se3 hexagonal microplates.

The surface formation oxide assists of visible to ultraviolet photoelectric conversion in α-In2Se3 hexagonal microplates has been explored. Hexagonal α-In2Se3 microplates with the sizes of 10s to 100s of micrometers were synthesized and prepared by the chemical vapor transport method using ICl3 as a transport agent. Many vacancies and surface imperfection states have been found in the bulk and on the surface of the microplate because of the intrinsic defect nature of α-In2Se3. To discover physical and chemical properties and finding technological uses of α-In2Se3, several experiments including transmission electron miscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), surface photovoltage (SPV), photoluminescence (PL), surface photoresponse (SPR), photoconductivity (PC), and thermoreflectance (TR) measurements have been carried out. Experimental results of TEM, XPS, SPV, PL, and SPR measurements show that a surface oxidation layer α-In2Se3-3xO3x (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) has formed on the crystal face of α-In2Se3 in environmental air with the inner layer content close to In2Se3 but the outermost layer content approaching In2O3. The near band edge transitions of α-In2Se3 microplates have been probed experimentally by TR and PC measurements. The direct band gap of α-In2Se3 has been determined to be 1.453 eV. The SPV result shows a maximum quantum efficiency of the surface oxide α-In2Se3-3xO3x (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) that presents a peak photoresponse near 2.18 eV. The analyses of SPV, SPR, PL, TR, and PC measurements revealed that the surface oxide layer facilitates the conversion of the ultraviolet to the visible range while the native defects (Se and In vacancies) sustain photoconductivity in the near-infrared region. On the basis of the experimental results a wide-energy-range photodetector that combines PC- and SPR-mode operations for α-In2Se3 microplate has been made. The testing results show a well-behaved function of photoelectric conversion in the near-infrared to ultraviolet region via the auxiliary forming of surface oxide on the crystalline face of the α-In2Se3 microplates.