Photovoltaic nanocells for high-performance large-scale-integrated organic phototransistors

A high-performance large-scale-integrated organic phototransistor needs a semiconductor layer that maintains its photoelectric conversion ability well during high-resolution pixelization. However, lacking a precise design for the nanoscale structure, a trade-off between photoelectric performance and device miniaturization greatly limits the success in commercial application. Here we demonstrate a photovoltaic-nanocell enhancement strategy, which overcomes the trade-off and enables high-performance organic phototransistors at a level beyond large-scale integration. Embedding a core-shell photovoltaic nanocell based on perovskite quantum dots in a photocrosslinkable organic semiconductor, ultralarge-scale-integrated (>2²¹ units) imaging chips are manufactured using photolithography. 27 million pixels are interconnected and the pixel density is 3.1 × 10⁶ units cm^-2, at least two orders of magnitude higher than in existing organic imaging chips and equivalent to the latest commercial full-frame complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor camera chips. The embedded photovoltaic nanocells induce an in situ photogating modulation and enable photoresponsivity and detectivity of 6.8 × 10⁶ A W^-1 and 1.1 × 10¹³ Jones (at 1 Hz), respectively, achieving the highest values of organic imaging chips at large-scale or higher integration. In addition, a very-large-scale-integrated (>2¹⁶ units) stretchable biomimetic retina based on photovoltaic nanocells is manufactured for neuromorphic imaging recognition with not only resolution but also photoresponsivity and power consumption approaching those of the biological counterpart.