Enhancing spectral contrast in organic red-light photodetectors based on a light-absorbing and exciton-blocking layered system

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS. 108(3):034502 (2010) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3466766 .We demonstrated a highly sensitive red-light photodetector based on a mixed copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) and fullerene C-60 photoactive layer, similar to a so-called bulk heterojunction structure usually used in the field of organic photovoltaics. We incorporated an additional set of organic layers that was composed of two organic p-type semiconductors to reduce the blue-light sensitivities of CuPc- and C-60-based organic photodetectors. We used alpha, omega-diphenyl sexi-thiophene (P6T) and alpha, omega-bis(biphenyl-4-yl)ter-thiophene (BP3T), which are thiophene-based materials and usually have good hole-transporting properties. A thick (>100 nm) P6T layer absorbed blue light, preventing it from reaching the photoactive layer, and a thin (similar to 20 nm) BP3T layer whose band gap was larger than that of P6T blocked excitation energy transfer from P6T to CuPc. Thus, we successfully demonstrated a red-light photodetector with high peak sensitivity and whose current-voltage characteristics did not worsen. The optimal device showed a peak incident photon-current conversion efficiency of 51.7% at 620 nm and a specific detectivity of 4.0 X 10(11) cm Hz(1/2)/W.ArticleJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS. 108(3):034502 (2010)journal articl