Fabrication and Enhancement of Organic Photodetectors Based on Iron Phthalocyanine Films

Abstract

Iron–phthalocyanine (FePc) organic photoconductive detector was fabricated using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique to work in ultraviolet (UV) and visible regions. The organic semiconductor material (iron phthalocyanine) was deposited on n-type silicon wafer (Si) substrates at different thicknesses (100, 200 and 300) nm. FePc organic photoconductive detector has been improved by two methods: the first is to manufacture the detector on PSi substrates, and the second is by coating the detector with polyamide–nylon polymer to enhance the photoconductivity of the FePc detector. The current–voltage (I–V) characteristics, responsivity, photocurrent gain, response time and the quantum efficiency of the fabricated photoconductive detector were measured. The performance of the fabricated detector was taken under dark and illumination using two types of light sources: UV LED with wavelength (365[Formula: see text]nm), power of (10[Formula: see text]W) and Tungsten lamp with wavelength range between (500–800) nm and the optical power of (250[Formula: see text]W). The photoresponse enhancement was improved by coating the FePc films with 200[Formula: see text]nm of polyamide nylon polymer. This type of coating, which can be considered as a surface treatment, highly increased the photoresponse of the fabricated FePc UV detector. The results show that the responsivity increased four orders of magnitudes more than the responsivity of the uncoated FePc film. The effects of the coated polymers on the responsivity and the response time of the detector were investigated.