Ultrafast and Sensitive Self-Powered Photodetector Based on Graphene/Pentacene Single Crystal Heterostructure with Weak Light Detection Capacity

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2022 Dec;9(35):e2204332. doi: 10.1002/advs.202204332. Epub 2022 Oct 26.

Abstract

Organic materials exhibit efficient light absorption and low-temperature, large-scale processability, and have stimulated enormous research efforts for next-generation optoelectronics. While, high-performance organic devices with fast speed and high responsivity still face intractable challenges, due to their intrinsic limitations including finite carrier mobility and high exciton binding energy. Here an ultrafast and highly sensitive broadband phototransistor is demonstrated by integrating high-quality pentacene single crystal with monolayer graphene. Encouragingly, the -3 dB bandwidth can reach up to 26 kHz, which is a record-speed for such sensitized organic phototransistors. Enormous absorption, long exciton diffusion length of pentacene crystal, and efficient interfacial charge transfer enable a high responsivity of >105 A W-1 and specific detectivity of >1011 Jones. Moreover, self-powered weak-light detection is realized using a simple asymmetric configuration, and the obvious zero-bias photoresponses can be displayed even under 750 nW cm-2 light intensity. Excellent response speed and photoresponsivity enable high-speed image sensor capability in UV-Vis ranges. The results offer a practical strategy for constructing high-performance self-powered organic hybrid photodetectors, with strong applicability in wireless, weak-light detection, and video-frame-rate imaging applications.

Keywords: heterostructures; pentacene single crystals; self-powered photodetectors; ultrafast speed.