Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to Schottky barrier photo detectors due to their promising properties and easy of fabrication. Many samples of SB devices prepared by thermal deposition under high vacuum are studied in this research. Different types and thicknesses of oxides were deposited on silicon substrate. Metals of different types and thicknesses were deposited on top of oxides. Variation of photogenerated current, responsivity, quantum efficiency and detectivity as a function of incident light wavelength were measured. It was found that the shape of the curves has two maxima, one was around 500 nm and the other was around 700 mn. Ni (100)-SiO2-Si structure shows the maximum responsivity at 550 nm and it is equal to 400 mA/W. When comparison was made between devices of different metals, the nickel layer device showed high responsivity at visible region while the aluminum layer device showed high responsivity at near infrared region. Finally, the aluminum layer device showed detectivity higher than nickel layer device. The maximum detectivity of aluminum device was 6.4 x 10(10) cm/Hz W. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.