Polarization-Sensitive Photodetectors Enabled by Plasmonic Metasurface Integrated Organic Photodiodes

Unlike conventional intensity-oriented photodetectors, meta-photodetectors combine plasmonic metasurfaces with solid-state photodetectors and give rise to unique functionality that can sense the multiple intrinsic properties of light fields, such as polarization, phase, or wavelength. However, most reported meta-photodetectors suffer from either a lack of fully integrated device configurations or relatively low photoresponsivity. Moreover, almost all the reported devices are built on inorganic semiconductors, even though organics promise potentially superior merits in terms of cost, processing, and mechanical flexibility. Here, by fully integrating the plasmonic structure into an organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) photodiode, we demonstrate organic polarization-sensitive photodetectors. Based on the codesign of the plasmon-integrated architecture and organic photodiode interface engineering, our meta-photodetectors exhibit a good balance between accurate polarization detection, low cost, easy processing, and decent photoresponsivity. In particular, a linear polarization ratio up to 0.8 is achieved, allowing for clear differentiation of polarization states. In addition, this organic polarization-sensitive photodetector is ultrathin, compact, and fully integrated. By leveraging the mechanical flexibility of organic materials, we also showcase a flexible photodetector with superior polarization identification, even while undergoing bending. This device concept offers great promise in realizing well-balanced multifunctional photodetectors for multidimensional photodetection and imaging by combining optical metasurfaces with organic photodetectors.