Reverse dark current in organic photodetectors and the major role of traps as source of noise

Organic photodetectors have promising applications in low-cost imaging, health monitoring and near-infrared sensing. Recent research on organic photodetectors based on donor-acceptor systems has resulted in narrow-band, flexible and biocompatible devices, of which the best reach external photovoltaic quantum efficiencies approaching 100%. However, the high noise spectral density of these devices limits their specific detectivity to around 10(13)Jones in the visible and several orders of magnitude lower in the near-infrared, severely reducing performance. Here, we show that the shot noise, proportional to the dark current, dominates the noise spectral density, demanding a comprehensive understanding of the dark current. We demonstrate that, in addition to the intrinsic saturation current generated via charge-transfer states, dark current contains a major contribution from trap-assisted generated charges and decreases systematically with decreasing concentration of traps. By modeling the dark current of several donor-acceptor systems, we reveal the interplay between traps and charge-transfer states as source of dark current and show that traps dominate the generation processes, thus being the main limiting factor of organic photodetectors detectivity. The suppression of dark current in organic photodetectors (OPDs) is important for maximizing the performance of the devices. Here, the authors report the relationship between the high dark saturation current and the presence of mid-gap trap states in OPDs with a donor-acceptor structure.