High-Speed Flexible Near-Infrared Organic Photodetectors for Self-Powered Optical Integrated Sensing and Communications

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) based on radio frequency (RF), merging the sensing and communication functionalities into a single platform, can effectively address the increasing demand for spectrums due to the proliferation of wireless devices. However, the ISAC commonly suffers from spectrum scarcity, high power consumption, and limited sensing capabilities. Here flexible self-powered optical ISAC (O-ISAC) is proposed and fabricated by preparing a high-speed near-infrared organic photodetector (NIR OPD) that exhibits a broad photodetection ranging from 300 to 1100 nm, specific detectivity over 1013 Jones, and -3 dB cutoff frequency over 1 MHz (lambda = 1050 nm) in self-powered mode, ranking as the fastest among self-powered NIR OPDs in the region above 1000 nm. The device is fabricated by incorporating a narrow-bandgap non-fullerene acceptor BTPSV-4Cl into the PCE-10:BTPSV-4F system to finely tune the film morphology and reduce trap states and energetic disorder. The semitransparent and regular NIR OPDs are integrated on one substrate to fabricate flexible O-ISAC, realizing simultaneous accurate vital signs monitoring and high-speed data transmission under ambient, sunlight, and NIR lighting conditions. It is envisioned that the proposed O-ISAC will inspire a new generation of wireless technology to address RF limitations for emerging applications, such as intelligent healthcare, autonomous vehicles, and security. A flexible self-powered O-ISAC is fabricated based on high-speed NIR OPDs using halogenation and multi-component strategies to finely tune the film morphology and reduce trap states and energetic disorder. Consequently, the flexible O-ISAC realizes simultaneous accurate vital signs monitoring and high-speed optical wireless communication under visible, NIR, and sunlight with various intensities. image