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Accurate characterization of next-generation thin-film photodetectors

Nature Photonics volume 13, pages 1–4 (2019)Cite this article

The performance of photodetectors fabricated from emerging semiconductors such as perovskites, quantum dots, two-dimensional materials or organics, for example, can be prone to misinterpretation. This Comment exposes the problems and proposes some guidelines for accurate characterization.

Next-generation semiconductors, such as the organohalide perovskites, inorganic nanocrystals and organic semiconductors, are progressively enabling new thin-film optoelectronics, including photovoltaics, light-emitting devices and photodetectors. The basic electro-optical physics of these materials and the related devices are quite different to traditional crystalline systems such as silicon and compound semiconductors. In particular, charge traps and disorder play substantial roles and have a profound influence on electronic properties. This behaviour poses new challenges at the basic materials and device design level — and also means that well-established principles and methods for device characterization are prone to misinterpretation at best, or complete failure at worst. This has led to several unrealistic and potentially erroneous claims of record-high performance metrics in the literature, notably specific detectivities and noise equivalent power (NEP). In this Comment, we address this question for the case of next-generation thin-film photodetectors. This is a rapidly expanding field with considerable technological potential but requiring firm performance metric guidelines to establish valid comparisons between different semiconductors and architectures.

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Fig. 1: Frequency dependence of the responsivity, noise and specific detectivity.
Fig. 2: Noise equivalent power determination.

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Acknowledgements

J.H. and Y.F. acknowledge financial support from the Academic Research Initiative in Department of Home Security under award 2014-DN-077-ARI069 and the National Science Foundation under award ECCS – 1747674. P.M. and A.A. acknowledge the support of the European Regional Development Fund (Welsh European Funding Office) and Swansea University for the Sustainable Advanced Materials strategic initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Yanjun Fang & Jinsong Huang

  2. Department of Physics, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Ardalan Armin & Paul Meredith

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  1. Yanjun Fang
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  2. Ardalan Armin
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  3. Paul Meredith
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  4. Jinsong Huang
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Correspondence to Paul Meredith or Jinsong Huang.

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Fang, Y., Armin, A., Meredith, P. et al. Accurate characterization of next-generation thin-film photodetectors. Nature Photon 13, 1–4 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0288-z

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