skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Tuning the charge blocking layer to enhance photomultiplication in organic shortwave infrared photodetectors
Emerging infrared photodetectors have reported a high level of gain using trap-assisted photomultiplication mechanisms enabling significant enhancements in their sensitivity. This work investigates a series of interfacial materials in order to understand how charge blocking layers facilitate trap-assisted photomultiplication in organic shortwave infrared detectors. The hole blocking layers induce accumulation of photogenerated holes at the interface, which in turn lowers the electron injection barrier and enables photomultiplication. In addition to examining photoresponse characteristics, the device dark current is analyzed by fitting to a charge injection model to quantify injection barriers. This demonstrates that the electric field induced barrier lowering effect plateaus with increasing applied bias. Among the interfaces studied, the best detectivity is observed using the hole blocking layer bathophenanthroline (Bphen), which reduces the probability of recombination and extends the lifetime of trapped holes to increase photomultiplication. This leads to a responsivity of 5.6 A W −1 (equivalent external quantum efficiency = 660% at 1050 nm) and detectivity of 10 9 Jones with broadband operation from 600 nm to 1400 nm.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1839361 1757220
PAR ID:
10212973
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Materials Chemistry C
Volume:
8
Issue:
43
ISSN:
2050-7526
Page Range / eLocation ID:
15142 to 15149
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces)
    In this work, we demonstrate an ultrasensitive, visible-blind ultraviolet (UV) photodetector based on perovskite–polymer hybrid structure. A novel wide-band-gap vacancy-ordered lead-free inorganic perovskite Cs2SnCl6 with Nd3+ doping is employed in the active layer of this hybrid photodetector. Remarkably, with interfacial charge-controlled hole-injection operating mechanism, our device achieves a maximum detectivity of 6.3 × 1015 Jones at 372 nm, fast photoresponse speed with rise time and fall time in the order of milliseconds, and a large linear dynamic range of 118 dB. The performance is significantly better than most of the existing organic and inorganic semiconductor UV photodetectors reported so far, and its detectivity is close to 1 order of magnitude higher than that of the photomultiplication tube (PMT) in the UV region. In addition, the photodetector demonstrated excellent environmental stability, which is critical for commercial deployment of perovskite-based optoelectronic devices. The results presented in this work open a new route toward development of high-performance optoelectronic devices using perovskite-based hybrid nanomaterial systems. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Condensed Matter)
    Forward bias hole injection from 10-nm-thick p-type nickel oxide layers into 10-μm-thick n-type gallium oxide in a vertical NiO/Ga2O3 p–n heterojunction leads to enhancement of photoresponse of more than a factor of 2 when measured from this junction. While it takes only 600 s to obtain such a pronounced increase in photoresponse, it persists for hours, indicating the feasibility of photovoltaic device performance control. The effect is ascribed to a charge injection-induced increase in minority carrier (hole) diffusion length (resulting in improved collection of photogenerated non-equilibrium carriers) in n-type β-Ga2O3 epitaxial layers due to trapping of injected charge (holes) on deep meta-stable levels in the material and the subsequent blocking of non-equilibrium carrier recombination through these levels. Suppressed recombination leads to increased non-equilibrium carrier lifetime, in turn determining a longer diffusion length and being the root-cause of the effect of charge injection. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; (, Advanced Functional Materials)
    Abstract Room‐temperature solution‐processed flexible photodetectors with spectral response from 300 to 2600 nm are reported. Solution‐processed polymeric thin film with transparency ranging from 300 to 7000 nm and superior electrical conductivity as the transparent electrode is reported. Solution‐processed flexible broadband photodetectors with a “vertical” device structure incorporating a perovskite/PbSe quantum dot bilayer thin film based on the above solution‐processed transparent polymeric electrode are demonstrated. The utilization of perovskite/PbSe quantum dot bilayer thin film as the photoactive layer extends spectral response to infrared region and boosts photocurrent densities in both visible and infrared regions through the trap‐assisted photomultiplication effect. Operated at room temperature and under an external bias of ‐1 V, the solution‐processed flexible photodetectors exhibit over 230 mA W‐1responsivity, over 1011 cm Hz1/2/W photodetectivity from 300 to 2600 nm and ≈70 dB linear dynamic ranges. It is also found that the solution‐processed flexible broadband photodetectors exhibit fast response time and excellent flexibility. All these results demonstrate that this work develop a facile approach to realize room‐temperature operated ultrasensitive solution‐processed flexible broadband photodetectors with “vertical” device structure through solution‐processed transparent polymeric electrode. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics)
    null (Ed.)
    X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were applied to investigate the electronic structure and molecular packing of C8-BTBT on HOPG with an ultrathin C 60 interlayer. It was found that C8-BTBT displays a Vollmer–Weber (V–W) growth mode on HOPG, with an ultrathin C 60 interlayer (0.7 nm). Compared to the uniform lying-down growth mode as directly grown on HOPG, the C8-BTBT molecules here adopt a lying-down orientation at low coverage with some small tilt angles because the π–π interaction between C8-BTBT and HOPG is partly disturbed by the C 60 interlayer, delivering a higher highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) in C8-BTBT. An interface dipole of 0.14 eV is observed due to electron transport from C8-BTBT to C 60 . The upward and downward band bending in C8-BTBT and C 60 , respectively, near the C8-BTBT/C 60 interface reduces the hole transport barrier at the interface, facilitating the hole injection from C 60 to C8-BTBT, while a large electron transfer barrier from C 60 to C8-BTBT is detected at this interface, which effectively limits electron injection from C 60 to C8-BTBT. The HOMO of C8-BTBT near the interface is largely lifted up by the C 60 insertion layer, which causes a p-doping effect and increases the hole mobility in C8-BTBT. Furthermore, owing to the lowest occupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of C 60 residing in the gap of C8-BTBT, charge transfer occurs between C 60 and the trap states in C8-BTBT to effectively passivate the trapping states. Our efforts aid a better understanding of the electron structure and film growth of anisotropic molecules and provide a useful strategy to improve the performance of C8-BTBT-based devices. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, Micromachines)
    null (Ed.)
    To prevent electron leakage in deep ultraviolet (UV) AlGaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs), Al-rich p-type AlxGa(1−x)N electron blocking layer (EBL) has been utilized. However, the conventional EBL can mitigate the electron overflow only up to some extent and adversely, holes are depleted in the EBL due to the formation of positive sheet polarization charges at the heterointerface of the last quantum barrier (QB)/EBL. Subsequently, the hole injection efficiency of the LED is severely limited. In this regard, we propose an EBL-free AlGaN deep UV LED structure using graded staircase quantum barriers (GSQBs) instead of conventional QBs without affecting the hole injection efficiency. The reported structure exhibits significantly reduced thermal velocity and mean free path of electrons in the active region, thus greatly confines the electrons over there and tremendously decreases the electron leakage into the p-region. Moreover, such specially designed QBs reduce the quantum-confined Stark effect in the active region, thereby improves the electron and hole wavefunctions overlap. As a result, both the internal quantum efficiency and output power of the GSQB structure are ~2.13 times higher than the conventional structure at 60 mA. Importantly, our proposed structure exhibits only ~20.68% efficiency droop during 0–60 mA injection current, which is significantly lower compared to the regular structure. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email