Semiconductor nanowires acts as an emerging class of materials with great potential for applications in future electronic devices. Small size, large surface to volume ratio and high carrier mobility of nanowires make them potentially useful for electronic applications with high integration density. In this thesis, the focus was on the growth of high quality ZnO nanowires, fabrication of field effect transistors and UV- photodetectros based on them. Intrinsic nanowire parameters such as carrier concentration, field effect mobility and resistivity were measured by configuring nanowires as field effect transistors. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a high gain UV photodetector. A single ZnO nanowire functioning as a UV photodetector showed promising results with an extremely high spectral responsivity of 120 kA/W at wavelength of 370 nm. This corresponds to high photoconductive gain of 2150. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest responsivity and gain reported so far, the previous values being responsivity=40 kA/W and gain=450. The enhanced photoconductive behavior is attributed to the presence of surface states that acts as hole traps which increase the life time of photogenerated electrons raising the photocurrent. This work provides the evidence of such solid states and preliminary results to modify the surface of ZnO nanowire is also produced.

Nanotechnology is a technology of the design and the applications of nanoscale materials with their fundamentally new properties and functions. Nanosensor devices based on nanomaterials provide very fast response, low-cost, long-life time, easy to use for unskilled users, and provide high-efficiency. 1-D ZnO nanostructures materials have great potential applications in various sensing applications. ZnO is a wide band gap (3.37 eV at room temperature) semiconductor materials having large exciton binding energy (60 meV) and excellent chemical stability, electrical, optical, piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. By doping the transition metals (TM) into ZnO matrix, the properties of ZnO nanostructures can be tuned and its room  temperature ferromagnetic behavior can be enhanced, which provide the TM-doped ZnO nanostructures as promising candidate for optoelectronic, spintronics and high performance sensors based devices. The synthesis of ZnO and TM-doped ZnO nanostructures via the low temperature hydrothermal method is considered a promising technique due to low cost, environmental friendly, simple solution process, diverse 1-D ZnO nanostructures can be achieved, and large scale production on any type of substrate, and their properties can be controlled by the growth parameters. However, to synthesize 1-D ZnO and TM-doped ZnO nanostructures with controlled shape, structure and uniform size distribution on large area substrates with desirable properties, low cost and simple processes are of high interest and it is a big challenge at present. The main purpose of this dissertation aims to develop new techniques to synthesize 1-D ZnO and (Fe, Mn)-doped ZnO nanostructures via the hydrothermal method, to characterize and to enhance their functional properties for developing sensing devices such as biosensors for clinical diagnoses and environmental monitoring applications, piezoresistive sensors and UV photodetector. The first part of the dissertation deals with the hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO nanostructures with controlled shape, structure and uniform size distribution under different conditions and their structural characterization. The possible parameters affecting the growth which can alter the morphology, uniformity and properties of the ZnO nanostructures were investigated. Well-aligned ZnO nanorods have been fabricated for high sensitive piezoresistive sensor. The development of creatinine biosensor for clinical diagnoses purpose and the development of glucose biosensor for indirect determination of mercury ions for an inexpensive and unskilled users for environmental monitoring applications with highly sensitive, selective, stable, reproducible, interference resistant, and fast response time have been fabricated based on ZnO nanorods. The second part of the dissertation presents a new hydrothermal synthesis of (Fe, Mn)-doped-ZnO nanostructures under different preparation conditions, their properties characterization and the fabrication of piezoresistive sensors and UV photodetectors based devices were demonstrated. The solution preparation condition and growth parameters that influences on the morphology, structures and properties of the nanostructures were investigated. The fabrication of Mn-doped-ZnO NRs/PEDOT:PSS Schottky diodes used as high performance piezoresistive sensor and UV photodetector have been studied and Fe-doped ZnO NRs/FTO Schottky diode has also been fabricated for high performance of UV photodetector. Finally, a brief outlook into future challenges and relating new opportunities are presented in the last part of the dissertation.

Through the history of mankind, novel materials have played a key role in techno- logical progress. As we approach the limits of scaling it becomes difficult to squeeze out any more extensions to Moore’s law by just reducing device feature sizes. It is important to look for an alternate semiconductor to silicon in order to continue making the progress predicted by Moore’s law. Among the various semiconductor options being explored world-wide, the III-nitride semiconductor material system has certain unique characteristics that make it one of the leading contenders. We explore the III-nitride semiconductor material system for the unique advantages that it offers over the other alternatives available to us. This thesis studies the device applications of epitaxial III-nitride films and nanos- tructures grown using plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE) The material characterisation of the PAMBE grown epitaxial III-nitrides was car- ried out using techniques like high resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD), field emis- sion scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), room temperature photoluminescence (PL) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The epitaxial III-nitrides were then further processed to fabricate devices like Schottky diodes, photodetectors and surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. The electrical charcterisation of the fabricated devices was carried out using techniques like Hall measurement, IV and CV measure- ments on a DC probe station and S-parameter measurements on a vector network analyser connected to an RF probe station. We begin our work on Schottky diodes by explaining the motivation for adding an interfacial layer in a metal-semiconductor Schottky contact and how high-k di- electrics like HfO2 have been relatively unexplored in this application. We report the work carried out on the Pt/n-GaN metal-semiconductor (MS) Schottky and the Pt/HfO2/n-GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) Schottky diode. We report an improvement in the diode parameters like barrier height (0.52 eV to 0.63 eV), ideality factor (2.1 to 1.3) and rectification ratio (35.9 to 98.9 @2V bias) after the introduction of 5 nm of HfO2 as the interfacial layer. Temperature dependent I-V measurements were done to gain a further understanding of the interface. We observe that the barrier height and ideality factor exhibit a temperature dependence. This was attributed to inhomogeneities at the interface and by assuming a Gaussian distribution of barrier heights. UV and IR photodetectors using III-nitrides are then studied. Our work on UV photodetectors describes the growth of epitaxial GaN films. Au nanoparticles were fabricated on these films using thermal evaporation and annealing. Al nanostruc- tures were fabricated using nanosphere lithography. Plasmonic enhancement using these metallic nanostructures was explored by fabricating metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetectors. We observed plasmonic enhancement of photocurrent in both cases. To obtain greater improvement, we etched down on the GaN film using reac tive ion etching (RIE). This resulted in further increase in photocurrent along with a reduction in dark current which was attributed to creation of new trap states. IR photodetectors studied in this thesis are InN quantum dots whose density can be controlled by varying the indium flux during growth. We observe that increase in InN quantum dot density results in increase in photocurrent and decrease in dark current in the fabricated IR photodetectors. We then explore the advantages that InGaN offers as a material that supports surface acoustic waves and fabricate InGaN based surface acoustic wave devices. We describe the growth of epitaxial In0.23 Ga0.77 N films on GaN template using molecular beam epitaxy. Material characterisation was carried out using HR-XRD, FESEM, PL and TEM. The composition was determined from HR-XRD and PL measurements and both results matched each other. This was followed by the fabrication of interdigited electrodes with finger spacing of 10 µm. S-parameter results showed a transmission peak at 104 MHz with an insertion loss of 19 dB. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an InGaN based SAW device. In summary, this thesis demonstrates the practical advantages of epitaxially grown film and nanostructured III-nitride materials such as GaN, InN and InGaN using plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy for Schottky diodes, UV and IR photodetec- tors and surface acoustic wave devices.