Black Phosphorus NIR Photodetectors

MDPI Sensors publishes a paper "Multilayer Black Phosphorus Near-Infrared Photodetectors" by Chaojian Hou, Lijun Yang, Bo Li, Qihan Zhang, Yuefeng Li, Qiuyang Yue, Yang Wang, Zhan Yang, and Lixin Dong from Harbin Institute of Technology (China), Michigan State University (USA), and Soochow University (China).

"Black phosphorus (BP), owing to its distinguished properties, has become one of the most competitive candidates for photodetectors. However, there has been little attention paid on photo-response performance of multilayer BP nanoflakes with large layer thickness. In fact, multilayer BP nanoflakes with large layer thickness have greater potential from the fabrication viewpoint as well as due to the physical properties than single or few layer ones. In this report, the thickness-dependence of the intrinsic property of BP photodetectors in the dark was initially investigated. Then the photo-response performance (including responsivity, photo-gain, photo-switching time, noise equivalent power, and specific detectivity) of BP photodetectors with relative thicker thickness was explored under a near-infrared laser beam (λIR = 830 nm). Our experimental results reveal the impact of BP’s thickness on the current intensity of the channel and show degenerated p-type BP is beneficial for larger current intensity. More importantly, the photo-response of our thicker BP photodetectors exhibited a larger responsivity up to 2.42 A/W than the few-layer ones and a fast response photo-switching speed (response time is ~2.5 ms) comparable to thinner BP nanoflakes was obtained, indicating BP nanoflakes with larger layer thickness are also promising for application for ultra-fast and ultra-high near-infrared photodetectors."

Unfortunately, no spectrum response of QE measurements are published. The EQE at 830nm graphs show large internal gain of photosensitive FET structures: