Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 6-12-2026

Abstract

Silver vanadate (AgVO3) is a promising photodetector material, but its utility is critically limited by rapid electron-hole recombination and photocorrosion under sustained illumination. Here, we report a systematic investigation of ultrasonically cavitation-processed Ag:AgVO3 nanocomposite thin films at five controlled Ag mass fractions, deposited on both n-type and p-type silicon substrates to fabricate ten heterojunction photodetectors. Rietveld-refined XRD, Williamson-Hall analysis, and optical characterization reveal a non-monotonic compositional evolution of bandgap (1.95-3.72 eV), microstrain (4.11 × 10− 4 to 2.70 × 10− 3 ), and Urbach tail energy (governed by atomic displacement parameters up to Biso = 15.246 Å2 ), collectively modulated by interfacial strain, plasmonic coupling, and oxide percolation. The pure Ag/n-Si Schottky device (S1/n-Si) achieves a responsivity of 0.53 A/W and detectivity of 6.18 × 1010 Jones through a trap-free plasmonic hot-electron injection mechanism (γ ≈ 1.89), while the Ag-rich composite on p-Si (S4/p-Si) delivers superlinear photocurrent scaling (γ = 2.40) via a p-p isotype heterojunction with a built-in potential of 0.691 eV. These results establish ultrasonic cavitation as a defect-engineering platform that enables access to two fundamentally distinct photodetection regimes (i.e., Schottky hot-electron injection and isotype carrier multiplication) within a single material system, without requiring epitaxial growth or high-temperature processing

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