Frontier technology of infrared photodetector $ Materials and devices for low-dimensional infrared detection
2021, 50(1): 20211014.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211014
As one of the core devices in the field of aeronautic and astronautics, deep space exploration, environmental monitoring, there is significant scientific research and practical application value for photodetector. In recent years, surface plasmon has become one of the research hotspots in the field of enhanced photodetection, due to the properties of breaking through the optical diffraction limit and realizing nanometer focusing. Hence, surface plasmon is a novel technical method for improving the performance of photodetectors. In this article, the research progress based on the photodetector with enhancement effect was reviewed, the enhancement effect can attribute to the surface plasmon nanostructure. Firstly, various kinds of physical properties of surface plasmon nanostructures were introduced, mainly included localized surface plasmon structure and surface plasmon polaritons structure with propagating nature, as well as the heterostructure that consisted of surface plasmon metal and semiconductor materials. Then, the research progress of photodetector enhanced by surface plasmon nanostructures was introduced focusing on the aspects of performance of photodetector, detection mechanism and fabrication process method. Finally, the photodetector enhanced by surface plasmon nanostructures and the related challenges in the future were both summarized and prospected.
2021, 50(1): 20211015.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211015
Terahertz technology has broad application prospects in non-destructive testing, biomedicine, industrial inspection, environmental monitoring, local area communications and national defense security. The terahertz detector in the terahertz system is its core component. Its performance determines the application market of the terahertz system and is one of the important research directions to promote the further development of terahertz technology. However, the low photon energy in the terahertz band makes it challenging to achieve high-speed and sensitive terahertz detection. With the advancement of nanotechnology and new material preparation technology, the high mobility and wide response band of low-dimensional materials provide new opportunities for terahertz detectors. Low-dimensional materials terahertz detectors have received extensive attention and their main advantages is high sensitivity, wide frequency band and low noise, and has made significant research progress in recent years. Although terahertz detectors have achieved breakthrough development, there are still some problems with various terahertz detectors. In this context, starting from the classification of terahertz detectors, the physical mechanism and latest research progress of bolometers, pyroelectric detectors, plasmon resonance detectors and hot carrier control detectors were briefly introduced. And look forward to the future development direction of low-dimensional material terahertz detectors.
2021, 50(1): 20211010.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211010
In recent years, infrared photodetectors have attracted increasing interest due to their promising applications in both military and civil areas. To further realize room-temperature, wide-spectrum, high-sensitivity, fast-response and low-power consumption infrared photodetectors, low-dimension semiconductors are considered as potential channel materials and have been studied widely. Among them, nanowires have special electrical and photoelectrical characteristics, showing enormous advantages in the applications of infrared photodetectors such as small size, low power consumption, high light absorption efficiency, abundant surface states, outstanding ability to separate and collect photoelectrons, good compatibility with Si complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and so on. At present, nanowires infrared photodetectors are going through continuous progress and breakthrough. In this review, recent advances in semiconductor nanowires infrared photodetectors were outlined in details. At the beginning, the basic characteristics, material choice and preparation methods of nanowires were introduced. Subsequently, many nanowires including binary and ternary compound semiconductors for the use of infrared detection were presented and their current detectable levels were illustrated precisely. Many methods of further improving their detecting performances were also classified and summarized, including constructing heterostructures, applying external field and integrating with other functional devices. On the basis of the above-mentioned advances, a comparison of advantages and disadvantages among different nanowires infrared detectors was given. In the end, the future development trend was indicated based on the challenges in this area and preliminary suggestions for the technical development route were presented.
2021, 50(1): 20211017.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211017
Infrared detection plays an important role in cutting-edge fields such as biomedicine, smart cities, and space exploration. In recent years, a new type of nanoscale semiconductor represented by two-dimensional materials is one of the candidates for a new generation of infrared photodetection technology. This is due to the fact that some index of two-dimensional materials device have exceeded the theoretical limits of traditional thin-film devices, such as detection sensitivity, ultralow dark current, high working temperature, etc. Two dimensional materials can easily be controlled by local field. In this review, the mechanism of three local fields to achieve high performance at room temperature were introduced in the first part, including ferroelectric local field, the interlayer built-in electric field, and the in-plane built-in electric field. Secondly, we introduced the photoelectric enhancement methods of unilateral depletion heterojunction and surface plasmon structure to solve the problem of low quantum efficiency and low light absorption caused by atomic thin effect of two-dimensional materials. Finally, we showed some applications of two-dimensional materials in infrared photodetection field. The exploration reveals the potential and prospect of the novel two-dimensional semiconductor in the field of infrared photodetection, which provides some new methods and ideas for the new generation infrared detector technology.
2021, 50(1): 20211016.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211016
Ultra-sensitive single-photon detection is a key technology for the development of optical quantum information and quantum manipulation. It is of important scientific significance and application value to realize high-efficiency, high-sensitivity, low-power and low-cost single-photon photodetectors. There is still a large gap between visible single-photon detector based on silicon and infrared ones in terms of the cost and performance. Exploring the technology of infrared single-photon detection with novel materials and mechanism has become the urgent needs in the field of photodetection. In recent years, low-dimensional materials have offered a new possibility for realizing high-gain, room-temperature and broad-band photodetectors due to their unique physical and chemical properties. The research on the low-dimensional materials based photodetectors with good performance has also become a hot topic in the field of infrared photodetection. In this review, the basic principles of traditional avalanche infrared photodetectors were introduced firstly. On this basis, the latest development of avalanche devices based on novel low-dimensional materials was summarized. Then the new gain amplification mechanism of the photodetector based on photogating effect was discussed and the structure as well as the performance of the devices were reviewed. Finally, the future developing directions and challenges of the infrared single-photon detection technology were prospected.
2021, 50(1): 20211020.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211020
Quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) is a new device utilizing the intersubband transition in conduction band or valance band, which has a very high free degree of device design. Due to the large conduction band-offset, the ultrafast electron relax time, the ultra-wide infrared transparency and the high energy LO-phonon, the GaN/Al(Ga)N multi-quantum wells (MQWs) has become a potential candidate for the infrared detector since the GaAs based MQWs. In this paper, the research progresses of intersubband transition absorption (ISBT) and corresponding photoresponse of GaN based MQWs were systematically reviewed. First, the operation principle and the selection rule of the quantum well infrared photodetector was explained. Then, the main research work was introduced including the ISBT absorption of polar, nonpolar and nanowire GaN based MQWs, from the near infrared to far infrared, even the THz range. Finally, the progress of GaN based QWIP and quantum cascade detectors (QCD) was reviewed including the photofresponse and the frequency response of the device. A conclusion and perspective was presented for the future research in GaN based QWIP and QCDs.
2021, 50(1): 20211018.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211018
Since the era of graphene, two-dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) with distinctive physical, chemical and optoelectronic properties have attracted extensive attention from researchers worldwide. Benefiting from the diversity of material composition and the layer number dependence of their bandgap, the spectral response ranges of 2DLMs can cover an extremely wide band from ultraviolet to infrared radiation. Moreover, because of the lifting of the restriction on lattice matching, 2DLMs can be stacked with other dimensional materials, such as bulk materials, nanowires, and quantum dots, through van der Waals (vdWs) forces, creating unique and exclusive devices from integrated structures. This article reviewed the research progress of several typical 2DLMs heterojunction photodetectors with great potential application in the field of photodetection, focusing on the breakthrough results achieved in performance improvements such as device gain, junction rectification ratio, response time and detection wavelength coverage for devices based on tungsten diselenide (WSe2), arsenic phosphorus (AsP), niobium trisulfide (NbS3) and palladium diselenide (PbSe2), through innovations in heterostructure building and exploitation of 2D processing cutting-edge technology. Meanwhile, we had also briefly analyzed the current challenges confronted by these device researches, and tentatively forecasted its future development trend.
2021, 50(1): 20211019.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211019
As Ⅳ-Ⅵ compound, tin telluride belongs to direct band gap semiconductor materials. Under the condition of room temperature and atmospheric pressure, tin telluride has a stable face-centered cubic crystal structure. Being a topological crystal insulator, tin telluride has a highly symmetrical crystal structure. Due to its helical multiple surface states and strong topological protection characteristics, tin telluride can be used to fabricate new electronic devices without energy consumption. Moreover, on account of its excellent properties such as band-gap free topological surface state and narrow band gap posture, it has great potential in the field of preparing new photodetectors with wide spectral response from ultraviolet, visible light to infrared. In addition, because of its high mobility at room temperature, tin telluride is expected to be used for high performance photoelectric detection with ultra-fast response speed. In this review, the preparation methods, crystal structures and properties of tin telluride materials were summarized from the point of view that they were suitable for photodetectors. And the research progress of tin telluride in infrared photoelectric detection in recent years was summarized. Then the development potential of tin telluride in the field of photodetectors was prospected, and several aspects that need to be further studied as photodetectors were also put forward.
2021, 50(1): 20211021.
doi: 10.3788/IRLA20211021
In recent years, transition metal telluride (TMTs) has attracted extensive attention and research in the scientific field due to its unique crystal structure and excellent physical and chemical properties. In this paper, CoTe2 quantum dots (QDs) was prepared by ultrasonic method, the morphology and structure of the prepared CoTe2 QDs were characterized by TEM, AFM, EDS, XPS, XRD and FTIR. The optical properties of the prepared CoTe2 QDs were investigated by Spectrophotometer (UV-Vis), Photoluminescence (PL) and Photoluminescence Excitation (PLE). CoTe2 QDs shows good dispersion, uniform particle size and spherical morphology. The average diameter and height of the grains are about 3.1 nm and 2.9 nm respectively. CoTe2 QDs shows the obvious absorption in the infrared band, and the absorption value decreases with the increase of dilution concentration. When the wavelength of excitation light and emission light increases in turn, the PL and PLE peaks have a red shift, and they have an obvious Stokes shift effect. It shows that the photoluminescence of CoTe2 QDs is wavelength dependent. CoTe2 QDs has the photoluminescence characteristic of multicolor, different excitation light wavelength can emit different colors of light. The fluorescence quantum yield of QDs is 62.6%. The excellent optical characteristics of CoTe2 QDs, especially its absorption and luminescence characteristics in the infrared band, shows that it has important potential application value in infrared detection, laser protective coating, fluorescence imaging, multicolor luminescence and nano-photonic devices, and is expected to become a new type of infrared detection material.
