Black Phosphorus Mid-Infrared Light-Emitting Diodes Integrated with Silicon Photonic Waveguides.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on III-V/II-VI materials have delivered a compelling performance in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region, which enabled wide-ranging applications in sensing, including environmental monitoring, defense, and medical diagnostics. Continued efforts are underway to realize on-chip sensors via heterogeneous integration of mid-IR emitters on a silicon photonic chip, but the uptake of such an approach is limited by the high costs and interfacial strains, associated with the processes of heterogeneous integrations. Here, the black phosphorus (BP)-based van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures are exploited as room-temperature LEDs. The demonstrated devices emit linearly polarized light, and the spectra cover the technologically important mid-IR atmospheric window. Additionally, the BP LEDs exhibit fast modulation speed and exceptional operation stability. The measured peak extrinsic quantum efficiency is comparable to the III-V/II-VI mid-IR LEDs. By leveraging the integrability of vdW heterostructures, we further demonstrate a silicon photonic waveguide-integrated BP LED.

Ultra-Broadband, High Speed, and High-Quantum-Efficiency Photodetectors Based on Black Phosphorus.

Black phosphorus (BP), a narrow band gap semiconductor without out-of-plane dangling bonds, has shown promise for broadband and integrable photodetector applications. Simultaneously exhibiting high speed and high-efficiency operation, however, remains a critical challenge for current BP-based photodetectors. Here, we demonstrate a photodetector based on the BP-based van der Waals heterostructures. The developed photodetector enables broadband responses in the visible to mid-infrared range with external quantum efficiency ranging from 20 to 52% at room temperature. These results together with noise measurements indicate that the photodetector can detect light in the picowatt range. Furthermore, the demonstrated BP detector has ultrafast rise (1.8 ns) and fall (1.68 ns) times, and its photoresponse exhibits reproducible switching behavior even under consecutive and rapid light intensity modulations (2100 cycles, 200 MHz), as indicated by the eye-diagram measurement. By leveraging these features, we show our BP heterostructures can be configured as a point-like detector in a scanning confocal microscopy, useful for mid-infrared imaging applications.