Highly UV sensitive Sn nanoparticles blended with polyaniline onto micro-interdigitated electrode array for UV-C detection applications

Highly UV sensitive sub-5 nm Sn nanoparticles-Polyaniline (Sn (NPs)-PANI) composite material has been formulated by chemical polymerisation. A thin film of the composite is deposited on Micro-Interdigitated Electrode (µ-IDEs) array for photodetector application. Considerably, higher optical density (10–12), w.r.t carbon of Sn (NPs) in Sn (NPs)-PANI/Al-IDE/Glass structures exhibit the exceedingly enhanced sensitivity towards UV illumination. There is substantial large contrast ratio of ∼ 2290 at − 1 V, significantly large responsivity ∼ 3.05 A/W, detectivity of ~ 2.26E + 13 Jones and reasonable rise/fall time of ∼ 0.7/1.7 s observed for Sn (NPs)-PANI/Al-IDE/Glass devices. Surface morphology, phase analysis, and elemental composition of Sn–PANI systems have been investigated by X-ray diffraction and Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), respectively. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis confirms the size of the Sn (NPs) and blend with Polyaniline. The significantly enhanced sensitivity of ~ 228514.3 for λ ~ 254 nm establishes the clear potential of the fabricated structure for UV-C detector application.