Heavy-metal-free solution-processed nanoparticle-based photodetectors: doping of intrinsic vacancies enables engineering of sensitivity and speed.

Photodetection in semiconductors enables digital imaging, spectroscopy, and optical communications. Integration of solution-processed light-sensing materials with a range of substrates offers access to new spectral regimes, the prospect of enhanced sensitivity, and compatibility with flexible electronics. Photoconductive photodetectors based on solution-cast nanocrystals have shown tremendous progress in recent years; however, high-performance reports to date have employed Pb- and Cd-containing materials.

Fast, sensitive and spectrally tuneable colloidal-quantum-dot photodetectors.

Solution-processed semiconductors are compatible with a range of substrates, which enables their direct integration with organic circuits, microfluidics, optical circuitry and commercial microelectronics. Ultrasensitive photodetectors based on solution-process colloidal quantum dots operating in both the visible and infrared have been demonstrated, but these devices have poor response times (on the scale of seconds) to changes in illumination, and rapid-response devices based on a photodiode architecture suffer from low sensitivity. Here, we show that the temporal response of these devices is determined by two components--electron drift, which is a fast process, and electron diffusion, which is a slow process.

Megahertz-frequency large-area optical modulators at 1.55 microm based on solution-cast colloidal quantum dots.

We report the realization of large-area, communications-wavelength electro-optic modulators made via simple solution-casting onto an arbitrary substrate. The devices employ colloidal quantum dots synthesized in, and processed from, the solution phase. Devices exhibit greater than 30% modulation depth at the 1.

Ultrasensitive solution-cast quantum dot photodetectors.

Solution-processed electronic and optoelectronic devices offer low cost, large device area, physical flexibility and convenient materials integration compared to conventional epitaxially grown, lattice-matched, crystalline semiconductor devices. Although the electronic or optoelectronic performance of these solution-processed devices is typically inferior to that of those fabricated by conventional routes, this can be tolerated for some applications in view of the other benefits. Here we report the fabrication of solution-processed infrared photodetectors that are superior in their normalized detectivity (D*, the figure of merit for detector sensitivity) to the best epitaxially grown devices operating at room temperature.