Structure design and performance of photomultiplication-type organic photodetectors based on an aggregation-induced emission material

Dechao Guo; Zeng Xu; Dezhi Yang; Dongge Ma; Benzhong Tang; Agafonov Vadim

doi:10.1039/c9nr09386a

Structure design and performance of photomultiplication-type organic photodetectors based on an aggregation-induced emission material

Nanoscale. 2020 Jan 28;12(4):2648-2656. doi: 10.1039/c9nr09386a. Epub 2020 Jan 15.

Authors

Dechao Guo¹, Zeng Xu¹, Dezhi Yang¹, Dongge Ma¹, Benzhong Tang², Agafonov Vadim³

Affiliations

¹ Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, People's Republic of China. msdgma@scut.edu.cn msdzyang@scut.edu.cn.
² Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Luminescence from Molecular Aggregates, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, People's Republic of China. msdgma@scut.edu.cn msdzyang@scut.edu.cn and Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction, The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
³ Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region 141700, Russia.

PMID: 31939957
DOI: 10.1039/c9nr09386a

Abstract

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) materials have shown attractive prospects in the fields of biological probes, chemical sensing, optoelectronic systems and stimuli responses. Here, we have successfully fabricated photomultiplication-type organic photodetectors based on an AIE material by designing a device structure. The high photoconductive gain was attributed to the interfacial trap-assisted hole-tunneling injection caused by MoO₃ as the trap for electrons. The fabricated AIE-based photomultiplication-type organic photodetectors exhibited the figures of merits of high external quantum efficiency in excess of 60 000%, responsivity of 172 A W^-1, detectivity of 3.08 × 10¹² Jones, and photoresponse with a rise time of 1.69 ms. Moreover, the devices also showed good stability with a half-life of 700 hours at continuous testing under ambient conditions, which makes them one of the most stable OPDs reported so far. The results demonstrate that AIE molecules are an excellent kind of photodetective material.