High-Performance Organic Phototransistors With Vertical Structure Design

In this paper, a novel vertical phototransistor was reported and compared with planar phototransistors for the first time. As compared with the planar phototransistors, the vertical ones exhibited much better photoelectric performance, which is attributed to an ultrashort photo-generated holes transfer distance and a stronger excitons dissociating electrical field due to their ultrashort channel length (tens of nanometers). Moreover, in order to examine the transport and trapping of different carrier charges separately, the impact of [6,6]-phenyl C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) dopant on the performance of planar and vertical phototransistors was investigated. The vertical devices exhibited an ultrahigh responsivity (similar to 6600 A/W) as well as an excellent detectivity (similar to 7 x 10(15) Jones) and a fast photoresponse (rise time of 0.28 s), whereas slight changes were observed in the planar ones with doping of PCBM. The high performance of the blend vertical phototransistors is due to the trapping of the photo-generated electrons with PCBM and the effective transport of holes due to the ultrashort channel length. This paper provided a promising pathway for low-cost, high-performance phototransistors.