Recent Advances in Materials, Structures, and Applications of Flexible Photodetectors

Flexible photodetectors (FPDs), which provide excellent advantages such as great wearability, portability, even implantability, have attracted tremendous interest in wearable healthcare monitoring, bendable imaging sensors, portable optical communication, etc. Recently, organic and perovskite-based photoactive materials have been considered promising candidates for FPDs due to their superior optoelectronic performance, appealing mechanical flexibility, low-temperature solution processability, and cost-effectiveness. In this review, the milestone progress of organic, perovskite, and organic-perovskite hybrid-based FPDs and their applications in artificial intelligence are summarized. First, a brief introduction of device configurations, working principles, and key parameters for FPDs are presented. Subsequently, functional materials in FPDs, especially flexible photoactive materials of organic, perovskite, and organic-perovskite hybrids, are summarized and analyzed. More importantly, representative applications of FPDs are summarized, including wearable healthcare monitoring, imaging sensors, and optical communication. The outlook and challenges for the field are proposed at the end. The purpose of this review is to not only elaborate on the fundamental design principles of FPDs, but also serve as a roadmap for next-generation artificial intelligence sensing technologies.