Spatially Confined Growth of Fullerene to Super-Long Crystalline Fibers in Supramolecular Gels for High-Performance Photodetector

As a superstar organic semiconductor, fullerene (C-60) is versatile in nature for its multiple photoelectric applications. However, owing to its natural 0D structure, a challenge still remains unbeaten as to growth of 1D fullerene crystals with tunable sizes. Herein, reported is an efficient approach to grow C-60 as super-long crystalline fibers with tunable lengths and diameters in supramolecular gel by synergic changes of anti-solvent, gel length, crystallization time or fullerene concentration. As a result, the crystalline C-60 fibers can be modulated to as long as 70 mm and 70 000 in their length-to-width ratio. In this case, the gel 3D network provides spatial confinements for the growth of 1D crystal along the directional dispersion of anti-solvent. The fabricated fullerene device exhibits high responsivity (2595.6 mA W-1) and high specific detectivity (2.7 x 10(12) Jones) at 10 V bias upon irradiation of 400 n m incident light. The on/off ratio and its quantum efficiency are near to 540 and about 800%, respectively, and importantly, its photoelectric property remains very stable after storage in air for six months. Therefore, spatially confined growth of fullerene in supramolecular gels will be another crucial strategy to synthesize 1D semiconductor crystals for photoelectrical device applications in near future.