Effects of Al doping on the responsivity of solar irradiation of devices that use ZnO nanoparticles

The effect of Al doping on the responsivity to solar irradiation and the response time for devices that use ZnO nanoparticles is studied. The incorporation of Al into ZnO nanoparticles leads to a reduction in the particle size, which causes an increase in the number of oxygen vacancies (V_O) and the introduction of Al-ions into the lattice of ZnO. Al-doped ZnO nanoparticles are responsive because there is an increase in the visible-emission absorption. A correlation between the incorporation of Al, the V_O density and the photocurrent is determined, which allows the sensitivity of ZnO nanoparticles to solar irradiation to be tuned.