Stacked Dual-Wavelength Near-Infrared Organic Photodetectors

Organic near-infrared (NIR) detectors have potential applications in biomedicine, agriculture, and manufacturing industries to identify and quantify materials contactless, in real time and at a low cost. Recently, tunable narrow-band NIR sensors based on charge-transfer state absorption of bulk-heterojunctions embedded into Fabry-Perot micro-cavities have been demonstrated. In this work, this type of sensor is further miniaturized by stacking two sub-cavities on top of each other. The resulting three-terminal device detects and distinguishes photons at two specific wavelengths. By varying the thickness of each sub-cavity, the detection ranges of the two sub-sensors are tuned independently between 790 and 1180, and 1020 and 1435 nm, respectively, with full-width-at-half-maxima ranging between 35 and 61 nm. Transfer matrix modeling is employed to select and optimize device architectures with a suppressed cross-talk in the coupled resonator system formed by the sub-cavities, and thus to allow for two distinct resonances. These stacked photodetectors pave the way for highly integrated, bi-signal spectroscopy tunable over a broad NIR range. To demonstrate the application potential, the stacked dual sensor is used to determine the ethanol concentration in a water solution.

Automated summary

This study miniaturized tunable narrow-band NIR sensors by embedding bulk-heterojunctions into Fabry-Perot micro-cavities. By stacking two sub-cavities, the sensor can detect and distinguish photons at two specific wavelengths, paving the way for highly integrated spectroscopy over a broad NIR range.