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Photovoltage field-effect transistors

Nature volume 542, pages 324–327 (2017)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 11 May 2017

Abstract

The detection of infrared radiation enables night vision, health monitoring, optical communications and three-dimensional object recognition. Silicon is widely used in modern electronics, but its electronic bandgap prevents the detection of light at wavelengths longer than about 1,100 nanometres. It is therefore of interest to extend the performance of silicon photodetectors into the infrared spectrum, beyond the bandgap of silicon1,2. Here we demonstrate a photovoltage field-effect transistor that uses silicon for charge transport, but is also sensitive to infrared light owing to the use of a quantum dot light absorber. The photovoltage generated at the interface between the silicon and the quantum dot, combined with the high transconductance provided by the silicon device, leads to high gain (more than 104 electrons per photon at 1,500 nanometres), fast time response (less than 10 microseconds) and a widely tunable spectral response. Our photovoltage field-effect transistor has a responsivity that is five orders of magnitude higher at a wavelength of 1,500 nanometres than that of previous infrared-sensitized silicon detectors3. The sensitization is achieved using a room-temperature solution process and does not rely on traditional high-temperature epitaxial growth of semiconductors (such as is used for germanium and III–V semiconductors)4,5. Our results show that colloidal quantum dots can be used as an efficient platform for silicon-based infrared detection, competitive with state-of-the-art epitaxial semiconductors.

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Figure 1: Structure and physical principles of the PVFET.
Figure 2: Numerical and analytical analysis of the PVFET.
Figure 3: Characterization of the PVFET.
Figure 4: Response time of the Si:CQD PVFET.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge L. Lavina, E. Palmiano, R. Wolowiec and D. Kopilovic for technical assistance and guidance, and S. Masala, S. Hoogland, F. P. Garcia de Arquer, O. Ouellette, M. Liu, X. Gong, G. Conte, C. Maragliano and A. de Iacovo for discussions. We are grateful to S. Boccia, J. Tam and the OCCAM group at the University of Toronto for assistance with SEM and TEM measurements. This work benefited from support from CMC Canada Microsystems. We thank for their assistance A. Fung, F. Aziz and the 3IT institute at the University of Sherbrooke. This publication is based on work supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, 10 King’s College Road, Toronto, M5S 3G4, Ontario, Canada

    Valerio Adinolfi & Edward H. Sargent

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  1. Valerio Adinolfi
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  2. Edward H. Sargent
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Contributions

V.A. conceived the idea, designed the device, developed the process and fabricated the devices, and designed and performed all the experiments and the simulations and characterized the device in full. E.H.S. directed the research and contributed to the design of the experiments. V.A. and E.H.S. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Edward H. Sargent.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reviewer Information Nature thanks C. Bayram and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Adinolfi, V., Sargent, E. Photovoltage field-effect transistors. Nature 542, 324–327 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21050

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