Wafer-Sized CsPbBr/CsPbCl Heterojunction: Breaking the Trade-Off between Sensitivity and Dark Current for Efficient X-ray Detector.

Polycrystalline lead halide perovskite finds promising use in fabricating X-ray detectors with a large lateral size, adjustable thickness, and diverse synthesis processes. However, a large dark current hinders its development for weak signal detection. Herein, we propose a multistep pressing strategy for manufacturing a CsPbBr/CsPbCl heterojunction wafer for a reduced dark current X-ray detector, and the device keeps a high sensitivity value after the insertion of a barrier by heterojunction; thus, the trade-off between sensitivity and dark current can be broken. The X-ray detector with a metal-semiconductor-metal structure yields a sensitivity of 6.32 × 10 μC Gy cm at a bias of 12 V, a 1/ noise of 1.02 × 10 A/Hz, and a detection limit of 66.58 nGy s. These performance parameters are considerably better than those of a similar X-ray detector based on the single-structure wafer. The improved device performance of the heterostructure X-ray detector is ascribed to the suppressed carrier recombination, enhanced carrier transportation of the heterojunction, and strong X-ray attenuation of the CsPbCl layer. The pixel array device is further used in imaging applications. Hence, this study provides an efficient strategy for fabricating heterostructure polycrystalline lead halide perovskite wafers for use in high-performance wafer-based X-ray detectors.