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Graphene charge-injection photodetectors

Nature Electronics volume 5, pages 281–288 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Charge-coupled devices are widely used imaging technologies. However, their speed is limited due to the complex readout process, which involves sequential charge transfer between wells, and their spectral bandwidth is limited due to the absorption limitations of silicon. Here we report graphene charge-injection photodetectors. The devices have a deep-depletion silicon well for charge integration, single-layer graphene for non-destructive direct readout and multilayer graphene for infrared photocharge injection. The photodetectors offer broadband imaging from ultraviolet (around 375 nm) to mid-infrared (around 3.8 μm), a conversion gain of 700 pA per electron, a responsivity above 0.1 A W−1 in the infrared region and a fast response time under 1 μs.

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Fig. 1: Device structure and band diagram of GCI.
Fig. 2: Characterization of GCI.
Fig. 3: Characterization of GCI in the IR range.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. The data that support the other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Jin and X. Zhang for help on the NIR test and L. Chen and H. Zhu for help on the MIR test. We thank E. Li, W. Yin, D. Dai, W. Chen, K. Huang, Z. Tan, H. Shen, C. Li, S. Song, Q. Xiong and T. Low for valuable discussions. Y.X. acknowledges the support of this work by NSFC (grant nos.92164106, 61874094, 62090030 and 52090030); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (K20200060 and 2021FZZX001-17); ZJU Micro-Nano Fabrication Center.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Wei Liu, Jianhang Lv, Li Peng, Hongwei Guo.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Micro-Nano Electronics, ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, ZJU-UIUC Joint Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Wei Liu, Jianhang Lv, Hongwei Guo, Chen Liu, Yilun Liu, Wei Li, Lingfei Li, Lixiang Liu, Srikrishna Chanakya Bodepudi, Khurram Shehzad, Yang Xu & Bin Yu

  2. Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Key Laboratory of Adsorption and Separation Materials & Technologies of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Li Peng & Chao Gao

  3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California Nanosystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Peiqi Wang & Xiangfeng Duan

  4. Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, China

    Guohua Hu

  5. State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Kaihui Liu

  6. Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering and Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Zhipei Sun

  7. Cambridge Graphene Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Tawfique Hasan

  8. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructure, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Xiaomu Wang

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  1. Wei Liu
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Contributions

Y.X., H.G. and X.D. designed the research. Y.X., H.G., W. L. and J.L. designed the experiment. L.P. and C.G. synthesized the MLG and developed the transfer methods. K.L. synthesized the SLG. Y.X., W.L., J.L., C.L. and Y.L. fabricated the devices and carried out the measurements. Y.X., L. Liu and L. Li assisted in part of the experiment. Y.X., H.G., P.W., S.C.B., K.S., Z.S., T.H. and B.Y. helped improve the manuscript. Y.X., X.W., C.G., B.Y., and X.D. guided the project. All the authors contributed to interpreting the data and writing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yang Xu, Xiaomu Wang, Chao Gao, Bin Yu or Xiangfeng Duan.

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Nature Electronics thanks Lukas Mennel and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Text 1–10, Figs. 1–16 and Table 1.

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Liu, W., Lv, J., Peng, L. et al. Graphene charge-injection photodetectors. Nat Electron 5, 281–288 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-022-00755-5

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