Issue 5, 2011

Organic phototransistors with nanoscale phase-separated polymer/polymer bulk heterojunction layers

Abstract

Low-cost detectors for sensing photons at a low light intensity are of crucial importance in modern science. Phototransistors can deliver better signals of low-intensity light by electrical amplification, but conventional inorganic phototransistors have a limitation owing to their high temperature processes in vacuum. In this work, we demonstrate organic phototransistors with polymer/polymer bulk heterojunction blend films (mixtures of p-type and n-type semiconducting polymers), which can be fabricated by inexpensive solution processes at room temperature. The key idea here is to effectively exploit hole charges (from p-type polymer) as major signaling carriers by employing p-type transistor geometry, while the n-type polymer helps efficient charge separation from excitons generated by incoming photons. Results showed that the present organic transistors exhibited proper functions as p-type phototransistors with ∼4.3 A W−1 responsivity at a low light intensity (1 µW cm−2), which supports their encouraging potential to replace conventional cooled charge coupled devices (CCD) for low-intensity light detection applications.

Graphical abstract: Organic phototransistors with nanoscale phase-separated polymer/polymer bulk heterojunction layers

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
29 Nov 2010
Accepted
21 Feb 2011
First published
14 Apr 2011

Nanoscale, 2011,3, 2275-2279

Organic phototransistors with nanoscale phase-separated polymer/polymer bulk heterojunction layers

H. Hwang, H. Kim, S. Nam, D. D. C. Bradley, C. Ha and Y. Kim, Nanoscale, 2011, 3, 2275 DOI: 10.1039/C0NR00915F

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