Light-modulated vertical heterojunction phototransistors with distinct logical photocurrents

The intriguing carrier dynamics in graphene heterojunctions have stimulated great interest in modulating the optoelectronic features to realize high-performance photodetectors. However, for most phototransistors, the photoresponse characteristics are modulated with an electrical gate or a static field. In this paper, we demonstrate a graphene/C₆₀/pentacene vertical phototransistor to tune both the photoresponse time and photocurrent based on light modulation. By exploiting the power-dependent multiple states of the photocurrent, remarkable logical photocurrent switching under infrared light modulation occurs in a thick C₆₀ layer (11 nm) device, which implies competition of the photogenerated carriers between graphene/C₆₀ and C₆₀/pentacene. Meanwhile, we observe a complete positive-negative alternating process under continuous 405 nm irradiation. Furthermore, infrared light modulation of a thin C₆₀ (5 nm) device results in a photoresponsivity improvement from 3425 A/W up to 7673 A/W, and we clearly probe the primary reason for the distinct modulation results between the 5 and 11 nm C₆₀ devices. In addition, the tuneable bandwidth of the infrared response from 10 to 3 × 10³ Hz under visible light modulation is explored. Such distinct types of optical modulation phenomena and logical photocurrent inversion characteristics pave the way for future tuneable logical photocurrent switching devices and high-performance phototransistors with vertical graphene heterojunction structures.