Enhanced Static and Dynamic Properties of Highly Miscible Fullerene-Free Green-Selective Organic Photodetectors

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Jun 2;13(21):25164-25174. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c02357. Epub 2021 May 21.

Abstract

We developed p-n junction organic photodetectors (OPDs) composed of a polymer donor and a nonfullerene acceptor (NFA) to increase both the responsivity (R) and detectivity (D*) while maintaining a narrow wavelength selectivity. The selection of the polymer donor and NFA with similar green (G) absorption is important for achieving G-wavelength selectivity in these OPDs, which differentiates them from current fullerene-based OPDs and NFA-based panchromatic absorption OPDs. In addition, mixing the polymer donor and asymmetric NFA was efficient toward increasing the miscibility and decreasing the interfacial energy difference of the blended films, resulting in the formation of a uniform and well-mixed nanomorphology in the photoconductive layer. Two-dimensional (2D) grazing incidence X-ray diffraction and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy revealed that the lamellar ordering of the polymer donor was enhanced in the blend film prepared with an asymmetric NFA, whereas the aggregation of a symmetric NFA in the blend films did not increase the lamellar ordering of the polymer donor. Consequently, we achieved an R value of 0.31 A/W and D* value of 2.0 × 1013 Jones with a full width at half-maximum value of 230 nm at -2 V and fast response time of 27 μs without any external bias in the asymmetric NFA-based OPDs. The enhancement in the lamellar ordering and miscibility of the blended films are crucial toward increasing the static and dynamic properties of OPDs.

Keywords: fast response; fullerene-free photodetector; green selectivity; high detectivity; high responsivity.