Structure-Property Relation in Organic-Metal Oxide Hybrid Phototransistors

We report an optoelectronic device consisting of a solution-processed indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistor and vacuum-deposited small organic molecules. Depending on the configurations of the organic materials, either bulk heterojunction or planar heterojunction (PHJ), the device assumes the functionality of either a photosensor or a photoinduced memory, respectively. Under λ = 625 nm light illumination, the photosensor shows response and recovery time of ∼50 ms, responsivity of ∼5 mA/W, sensitivity above 10⁴, and a linear response. The mechanism of the photoinduced memory is studied experimentally and verified using a device simulation. We find that the memory is due to long charge retention time at the organic PHJ interface which is stable for over 9 days. It is correlated with the low leakage current found in ordered organic junctions having low subgap tail states. The presented integration of the PHJ with the transistor constitutes a new design of write-once-read-many-times memory device that is likely to be attractive for low-cost applications.