Chip-integrated van der Waals PN heterojunction photodetector with low dark current and high responsivity

• Published in: Light, science & applications Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 101
• Main Authors: Tian, Ruijuan, Gan, Xuetao, Li, Chen, Chen, Xiaoqing, Hu, Siqi, Gu, Linpeng, Van Thourhout, Dries, Castellanos-Gomez, Andres, Sun, Zhipei, Zhao, Jianlin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.04.2022; Springer Nature B.V; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 142/126; 639/624/399/1099; 639/766/1130/2799; Applied and Technical Physics; Atomic; Classical and Continuum Physics; Integrated circuits; Lasers; Lithium; Molecular; Molybdenum; Optical and Plasma Physics; Optical Devices; Optical properties; Optics; Phosphorus; Photonics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Semiconductors; Silicon nitride
• ISSN: 2047-7538; 2095-5545; 2047-7538
• DOI: 10.1038/s41377-022-00784-x

Two-dimensional materials are attractive for constructing high-performance photonic chip-integrated photodetectors because of their remarkable electronic and optical properties and dangling-bond-free surfaces. However, the reported chip-integrated two-dimensional material photodetectors were mainly implemented with the configuration of metal-semiconductor-metal, suffering from high dark currents and low responsivities at high operation speed. Here, we report a van der Waals PN heterojunction photodetector, composed of p-type black phosphorous and n-type molybdenum telluride, integrated on a silicon nitride waveguide. The built-in electric field of the PN heterojunction significantly suppresses the dark current and improves the responsivity. Under a bias of 1 V pointing from n-type molybdenum telluride to p-type black phosphorous, the dark current is lower than 7 nA, which is more than two orders of magnitude lower than those reported in other waveguide-integrated black phosphorus photodetectors. An intrinsic responsivity up to 577 mA W −1 is obtained. Remarkably, the van der Waals PN heterojunction is tunable by the electrostatic doping to further engineer its rectification and improve the photodetection, enabling an increased responsivity of 709 mA W −1 . Besides, the heterojunction photodetector exhibits a response bandwidth of ~1.0 GHz and a uniform photodetection over a wide spectral range, as experimentally measured from 1500 to 1630 nm. The demonstrated chip-integrated van der Waals PN heterojunction photodetector with low dark current, high responsivity and fast response has great potentials to develop high-performance on-chip photodetectors for various photonic integrated circuits based on silicon, lithium niobate, polymer, etc. We report a waveguide-integrated BP/MoTe 2 PN heterojunction photodetector. It presents ultralow dark currents and high responsivities, which has potentials to develop high-performance on-chip photodetectors for various photonic integrated circuits.