Ultralow dark current in near-infrared perovskite photodiodes by reducing charge injection and interfacial charge generation

Metal halide perovskite photodiodes (PPDs) offer high responsivity and broad spectral sensitivity, making them attractive for low-cost visible and near-infrared sensing. A significant challenge in achieving high detectivity in PPDs is lowering the dark current density (JD) and noise current (in). This is commonly accomplished using charge-blocking layers to reduce charge injection. By analyzing the temperature dependence of JD for lead-tin based PPDs with different bandgaps and electron-blocking layers (EBL), we demonstrate that while EBLs eliminate electron injection, they facilitate undesired thermal charge generation at the EBL-perovskite interface. The interfacial energy offset between the EBL and the perovskite determines the magnitude and activation energy of JD. By increasing this offset we realized a PPD with ultralow JD and in of 5 × 10−8 mA cm−2 and 2 × 10−14 A Hz−1/2, respectively, and wavelength sensitivity up to 1050 nm, establishing a new design principle to maximize detectivity in perovskite photodiodes.

Selection of Outline Descriptors Based on LightGBM with Application to Infrared Image Target Recognition

Infrared sensing technology can be well used for night observation, which is becoming an important measure for battlefield reconnaissance. It is a powerful way to implement precision strikes and situational awareness by improving the ability of target recognition based on infrared images. For the problem of infrared image recognition, the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM) is employed to select the outline descriptors extracted based on the elliptic Fourier series (EFS), which is combined with sparse representation-based classification (SRC) to achieve target recognition. First, based on the target outlines in the infrared image, the multi-order outline descriptors are extracted to characterize the essential characteristics of the target to be recognized. Then, the LightGBM feature selection algorithm is used to screen the multi-order outline descriptors to reduce redundancy and improve the pertinence of features. Finally, the selected outline descriptors are classified based on SRC. The method effectively improves the effectiveness of the final features through the feature selection of LightGBM and reduces the computational complexity of classification at the same time, which is beneficial to improve the overall recognition performance. The mid-wave infrared (MWIR) dataset of various targets is employed to carry out verification experiments for the proposed method under three different conditions of original samples, noisy samples, and partially occluded samples. By comparing the proposed method with several types of existing infrared target recognition methods, the results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance.

High quality VO2 thin films synthesized from V2O5 powder for sensitive near-infrared detection

Vapor transport method has been successfully used to synthesize high quality VO2 thin films on SiO2/Si substrate using V2O5 as a precursor in an inert-gas environment. The morphological and structural evolutions of the intermediate phases during the nucleation and growth processes were investigated by SEM and Raman spectroscopy, respectively. The results showed that the conversion of V2O5 powder to VO2 thin films was dominated by a melting-evaporation-nucleation-growth mechanism. Further characterization results demonstrated that the high quality crystals of monoclinic VO2 thin films exhibit a sharp resistance change up to 4 orders of magnitude. In addition, the VO2 thin films exhibited good near-infrared response, high stability, and reproducibility under ambient conditions, which should be promising for sensitive near-infrared detection. Our work not only provided a simple and direct approach to synthesize high quality VO2 thin films with distinct phase transition properties but also demonstrated the possible infrared sensing application in the future.

Near-infrared to ultra-violet frequency conversion in chalcogenide metasurfaces

Chalcogenide photonics offers unique solutions for a broad range of applications from mid-infrared sensing to integrated, ultrafast, ultrahigh-bandwidth signal processing. However, to date its usage has been limited to the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus avoiding ultraviolet and visible ranges due to absorption of chalcogenide glasses. Here, we experimentally demonstrate and report near-infrared to ultraviolet frequency conversion in an As2S3-based metasurface, enabled by a phase locking mechanism between the pump and the inhomogeneous portion of the third harmonic signal. Due to the phase locking, the inhomogeneous component co-propagates with the pump pulse and encounters the same effective dispersion as the infrared pump, and thus experiences little or no absorption, consequently opening previously unexploited spectral range for chalcogenide glass science and applications, despite the presence of strong material absorption in this range.

Methodology of optimisation for a nanostructured two-photon absorption photodetector

We introduce a 3-step method to optimise a nanostructured photodetector for infrared sensing through non degenerated two-photon absorption (NDTPA). First, the nanostructure is designed to tailor the distribution and concentration of both pump and signal intensities within the absorbing layer, thus leading to a gain in two-photon absorption. Second, the issue of the competition between NDTPA and other sub-bandgap transitions is tackled with a new figure of merit to favor as much as possible NDTPA while minimising other absorption processes. Third, a refined computation of the gain and the figure of merit is done to consider focused beams. Finally, two scenarios based on low power infrared photodetection are investigated to illustrate the flexibility and adaptibility of the method. It is shown that the gain is up to 7 times higher and the figure of merit is up to 20 times higher compared to the literature.

Non-Layered Gold-Silicon and All-Silicon Frequency-Selective Metasurfaces for Potential Mid-Infrared Sensing Applications

We report simulations on the spectral behavior of non-layered gold-silicon and all-silicon frequency-selective metasurfaces in an asymmetric element configuration in the mid-infrared spectral window of 5–5.8 μm. The non-layered layout is experimentally feasible due to recent technological advances such as nano-imprint and nano-stencil lithography, and the spectral window was chosen due to the multitude of applications in sensing and imaging. The architecture exhibits significant resonance in the window of interest as well as extended tunability by means of variation of cell element sizes and relative coordinates. The results indicate that the proposed metasurface architecture is a viable candidate for mid-infrared absorbers, sensors and imaging systems.