Sensitive SWIR Organic Photodetectors with Spectral Response Reaching 1.5 µm

The performance of organic photodetectors (OPDs) sensitive to the short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) light lags behind commercial indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) photodetectors primarily due to the scarcity of organic semiconductors with efficient photoelectric responses exceeding 1.3 µm. Limited by the Energy-gap law, ultralow-bandgap organic semiconductors usually suffer from severe non-radiative transitions, resulting in low external quantum efficiency (EQE). Herein, a difluoro-substituted quinoid terminal group (QC-2F) with exceptionally strong electron-negativity is developed for constructing a new non-fullerene acceptor (NFA), Y-QC4F with an ultralow bandgap of 0.83 eV. This subtle structural modification significantly enhances intermolecular packing order and density, enabling an absorption onset up to 1.5 µm while suppressing non-radiation recombination in Y-QC4F films. SWIR OPDs based on Y-QC4F achieve an impressive detectivity (D*) over 10¹¹ Jones from 0.4 to 1.5 µm under 0 V bias, with a maximum of 1.68 × 10¹² Jones at 1.16 µm. Furthermore, the resulting OPDs demonstrate competitive performance with commercial photodetectors for high-quality SWIR imaging even under 1.4 µm irradiation.