Highly Sensitive and Ultrafast Organic Phototransistor Based on Rubrene Single Crystals

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Dec 8;13(48):57735-57742. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c18862. Epub 2021 Nov 29.

Abstract

Rubrene single crystals have received a lot of attention for their great potential in electronic and wearable nanoelectronics due to their high carrier mobility and excellent flexibility. While they exhibited remarkable electrical performances, their intrinsic potential as photon detectors has not been fully exploited. Here, we fabricate a sensitive and ultrafast organic phototransistor based on rubrene single crystals. The device covers the ultraviolet to visible range (275-532 nm), and the responsivity and detectivity can reach up to ∼4000 A W-1 and 1011 jones at 532 nm, respectively. Furthermore, the response times are highly gate-tunable down to sub-90 μs, and the cutoff frequency is ∼4 kHz, which is one of the fastest organic material-based phototransistors reported so far. Equally important is that the fabricated device exhibits stable light detection ability even after 8 months, indicating great long-term stability and excellent environmental robustness. The results suggest that the high-quality rubrene single crystal may be a promising material for future flexible optoelectronics with its intrinsic mechanical flexibility.

Keywords: environmental robustness; long-term stability; organic crystal; phototransistor; rubrene; ultrafast response.