Short-wave infrared photodetectors based on low-cost, environmentally friendly InSb colloidal quantum dots

The development of low-cost optoelectronic devices in the short-wave infrared (SWIR, 1-2 um), would open up a huge number of applications, such as 3D and adverse weather imaging, night vision for surveillance and automotive safety, chemical hazard detection, environmental sensing, and biomedical diagnostics etc. leading to a direct and huge impact on quality of life, health, and security, provided that such technologies are available at low cost and high volumes, to serve consumer electronics markets.

To address this large consumer market volume the necessity for low-cost, non-toxic, and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatible SWIR photodetectors is therefore indispensable.

To date, the SWIR has been served by costly epitaxial III-V semiconductors, which are not monolithically integrated to silicon (CMOS) electronics, and suffer from high growth cost and low volume manufacturing.

Compared to epitaxial technology, solution-processed technology based on colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) is more promising for SWIR photodetectors due to low cost and high volume manufacturing, and their CMOS integrability.

On the other hand, InSb is an environmentally friendly IIIV semiconductor which possesses a narrow direct band gap and the highest room temperature carrier mobility, and the smallest exciton binding energy of all semiconductors, thus being ideal for SWIR photodetectors.

Therefore, ECOSWIR aims to develop a whole new material platform based on non-epitaxial InSb CQDs that, in contrast to current III-V technologies, will enable CMOS compatibility and large-scale production of optoelectronic materials.Utilizing this achievement, ECOSWIR will provide a proof of principle of InSb CQDs SWIR photodetectors with performance that cannot be met by any prior CQDs devices, that will be competitive to the costly epitaxial technology and warrant introduction into high-volume, consumer electronics markets and pave the way towards printable SWIR photodetctors.