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Highly Sensitive All-Polymer Short-Wavelength Infrared Photodetectors for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
Yupu Wang1, Ruochen Wang1, Feng Li1
1School of Materials Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials for Intelligent Sensing, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Science, Key Laboratory of Organic Integrated Circuits, Ministry of Education, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
New dual-acceptor polymers enable high-performance all-polymer short-wavelength infrared organic photodetectors (OPDs) for vital monitoring and imaging. These materials offer excellent responsivity and detectivity, paving the way for advanced wearable and imaging applications.
Area of Science:
- Organic electronics
- Materials science
- Photonics
Background:
- Short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) organic photodetectors (OPDs) are crucial for vital monitoring and imaging.
- Development of all-polymer SWIR OPDs is hindered by a lack of high-performance n-type ultralow-bandgap polymer semiconductors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To synthesize and characterize novel dual-acceptor polymers for all-polymer SWIR OPDs.
- To investigate the performance of OPDs based on these new polymer semiconductors.
Main Methods:
- Synthesis of two dual-acceptor polymers, ThDPP-CNBTz and ThDPP-CNBSz, featuring dicyano-benzothiadiazole/benzoselenidazole acceptor units, diketopyrrolopyrrole, and thiophene donor moieties.
- Fabrication and characterization of all-polymer SWIR OPDs using these novel polymers.
- Evaluation of device performance, including responsivity, noise current, specific detectivity, and stability under mechanical strain.
- Monolithic integration with silicon-based readout circuits for high-resolution imaging.
Main Results:
- The synthesized polymers exhibit ultralow optical bandgaps and deep HOMO/LUMO levels, suitable for SWIR detection.
- ThDPP-CNBTz-based OPDs demonstrated superior responsivity (≥0.150 A W⁻¹) from 780 to 1060 nm.
- ThDPP-CNBSz-based OPDs exhibited lower noise currents due to higher thermal activation energy and reduced trap density.
- Both polymer-based OPDs achieved specific detectivity exceeding 10¹² Jones over broad spectral ranges (780-1140 nm and 350-1240 nm).
- Stretchable ThDPP-CNBTz-based OPDs maintained performance after 1000 stretching cycles (20% strain).
- High-resolution infrared imaging was achieved through monolithic integration with silicon readout circuits.
Conclusions:
- The developed dual-acceptor polymers are promising n-type semiconductors for high-performance all-polymer SWIR OPDs.
- These OPDs show potential for applications in wearable vital monitoring and advanced infrared imaging.
- The materials enable efficient charge generation and transport, leading to excellent photodetector characteristics.
