Antimony doped cadmium selenium nanobelts with enhanced electrical and optoelectrical properties

Intrinsic and Sb-doped CdSe nanobelts (NBs) were synthesized via a thermal evaporation technique. The electrical transport properties of field effect transistors (FETs) fabricated using the NBs were investigated. The results indicate that the Sb-doped NBs behave as n-type semiconductors with improved electrical conductivity (10−1 to 100 S/cm) compared with the intrinsic CdSe. Photodetectors made of single NB were also fabricated and investigated. The results show that Sb-doped NB photodetectors exhibit much higher responsivity (1.5 × 104 A/W) and external quantum efficiency (1.2 × 105) but lower on/off current ratio (∼253) and longer response time (≤40 ms). Furthermore, both electrical transport and optoelectrical properties of the as-synthesized CdSe NBs can be tuned by changing the doping concentration. The results indicate that the as-synthesized NBs are excellent building blocks for constructing electronic and optoelectronic devices.