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High-gain infrared-to-visible upconversion light-emitting phototransistors

Abstract

Infrared-to-visible upconversion devices made by integrating an infrared quantum dot photodetector with an organic light-emitting diode potentially offer a route to low-cost, pixel-free infrared imaging. However, making such devices sufficiently efficient for practical use is a challenge. Here, we report a high-gain vertical phototransistor with a perforated metallic source electrode having an EQE up to 1 × 105% and a detectivity of 1.2 × 1013 Jones. By incorporating a phosphorescent organic light-emitting diode in this phototransistor, an infrared-to-visible upconversion LEPT with a photon-to-photon conversion efficiency of over 1,000% is demonstrated.

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Figure 1: Schematic diagram of the new upconversion device.
Figure 2: Operation mechanism of the vertical phototransistor.
Figure 3: Device characteristics of vertical phototransistor.
Figure 4: Device characteristics of the LEPT.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support from Nanoholdings LLC. The experimental part of the work was carried out at the University of Florida.

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Contributions

F.S. conceived the device concept. H.Y. fabricated the devices. H.Y., D.Y.K. and F.S. designed the experiments and analysed the data. J.H.L., S.J.B. and R.S. contributed to the development of the photoactive gate part in the vertical transistors. J.W.L. contributed to the detectivity measurements.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Franky So.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Yu, H., Kim, D., Lee, J. et al. High-gain infrared-to-visible upconversion light-emitting phototransistors. Nature Photon 10, 129–134 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.270

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