The role of synthesizing time on the optoelectronic properties of TiO₂-ZnO nanocomposite on PTFE substrate fabricated by the chemical bath deposition method

ZnO-based ultraviolet photodetectors have been employed in advanced applications, including environmental monitoring, space exploration, and secured optical communication. In this work, TiO₂-ZnO nanocomposite that included Ti-doped ZnO nanorods was synthesized using chemical bath deposition method at 96 °C on PTFE substrates for ultraviolet photodetectors. ZnO nanorods grew for 3 h, followed immediately by the synthesis of TiO₂ for 2 h. The characterizations revealed several distinguished structural, optical, and electrical properties compared with reference ZnO-only samples deposited for 3 h and 5 h respectively. The indirect band gap of the produced nanocomposite was 3.09 eV. The fabricated ultraviolet photodetector revealed outstanding results: a responsivity of 673.667 mA/W, a detectivity of 5.121 × 10⁸ Jones, and an external quantum efficiency of 229.44 %. The results showed the potential of the nanocomposite for photodetector applications on flexible substrate.