Abstract
Recent progress in silicon photonics1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 has dramatically advanced the possible realization of heterogeneous logic circuits9,10. A variety of Boolean optoelectronic circuits have been proposed11,12,13,14,15. In this context, experimental investigation of logic operations with both optical and electrical inputs in chip-integrable devices is highly desirable. Here, we present a new kind of photodiode-based logic device using scalable heterojunctions of carbon nanotubes and silicon, the output currents of which can be manipulated completely by both optical and electrical inputs. This provides a novel platform for heterogeneous optoelectronic logic elements with voltage-switchable photocurrent responsivity of >1 A W−1, photovoltage responsivity of >1 × 105 V W−1, electrical on/off ratios of >1 × 105 and optical on/off ratios of >1 × 104. To demonstrate their scalability, we fabricated a large array of photoactive elements on a centimetre-scale wafer. We also present bidirectional phototransistors and novel clock-triggerable logic elements such as a mixed optoelectronic AND gate, a 2-bit optoelectronic ADDER/OR gate and a 4-bit optoelectronic digital-to-analog converter.
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Acknowledgements
This experimental part of this project was mainly supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (award no. Division of Electrical, Communication and Cyber-Systems (ECCS)-1202376) and an NEU internal seed grant. Y.J.J. acknowledges partial support by NSF-Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) (0927088). Y.K.K. and S.P. acknowledge financial support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (grants nos 2011-0002456 and 2012-0005146). A portion of the computational work was carried out using the resources of the KISTI Supercomputing Center (KSC-2012-C2-72 and KSC-2013-C2-024). Parts of the devices were fabricated at the Kostas Nanomanufacturing Center at NEU.
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Y.L.K., Y.J.J. and S.K. initiated the project and conceived the experiments. Y.L.K. fabricated and characterized the devices and analysed the data. H.Y.J. performed measurements and data analysis. B.L. fabricated devices and F.L. assisted with the optoelectronic measurement set-up. J.H. fabricated some of the devices in the final stages of the work. S.K. supervised the study with Y.-K.K. and Y.J.J. S.P. and Y.-K.K. simulated the results and proposed the device mechanism with S.K. All authors contributed to the analysis and commented on the work.
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At the time of submission, Northeastern University (Boston, USA) and Kyung Hee University (Seoul, Korea) were concurrently processing a patent application (PCT/US2013/60666).
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Kim, Y., Jung, H., Park, S. et al. Voltage-switchable photocurrents in single-walled carbon nanotube–silicon junctions for analog and digital optoelectronics. Nature Photon 8, 239–243 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.1
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