Fully printed flexible carbon nanotube photodetectors

Here, we report fully printed flexible photodetectors based on single-wall carbon nanotubes and the study of their electrical characteristics under laser illumination. Due to the photothermal effect and the use of high purity semiconducting carbon nanotubes, the devices exhibit gate-voltage-dependent photoresponse with the positive photocurrent or semiconductor-like behavior (conductivity increases at elevated temperatures) under positive gate biases and the negative photocurrent or metal-like behavior (conductivity decreases at elevated temperatures) under negative gate biases. Mechanism for such photoresponse is attributed to the different temperature dependencies of carrier concentration and carrier mobility, which are two competing factors that ultimately determine the photothermal effect-based photoresponse. The photodetectors built on the polyimide substrate also exhibit superior mechanical compliance and stable photoresponse after thousands of bending cycles down to a curvature radius as small as 3 mm. Furthermore, due to the low thermal conductivity of the plastic substrate, the devices show up to 6.5 fold improvement in responsivity compared to the devices built on the silicon substrate. The results presented here provide a viable path to low cost and high performance flexible photodetectors fabricated entirely by the printing process.