Controllable assembly of tin oxide thin films with efficient photoconductive activity

Cube-like, flower-like, urchin-like and spiky ball-like tin oxide nanostructural materials were synthesized via a simple one step hydrothermal method. The crystal structure, morphology and optical properties were investigated by XRD, FESEM and UV-vis. The optical analysis of these tin oxide samples show strong absorption in near-ultraviolet region and the band gap values lie in the range from 3.91 eV to 4.19 eV. Besides, the band gaps are different from samples with different shapes. When used as the photodetector materials for UV light detection, the tin oxide nanomaterials exhibited excellent photoconductive performance in terms of high sensitivity to the 254 nm and 365 nm UV light.