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Highly sensitive water pollution monitoring using colloid-processed organic photodetectors

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Abstract

Water stands at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals, and risk management for clean water often requires in situ monitoring of contaminants, where a portable photodetector with high detectivity is highly desired. The emerging portable organic photodetectors (OPDs) with intrinsic flexibility and light weight, which are promising candidates for in situ water pollution monitoring, often exhibit unsatisfactory specific detectivity (D*) lower than 1013 Jones, failing to meet monitoring requirements set below safety limits (~0.01–0.1 mg l−1) for pollutant discharge. Here we present OPDs with D* as high as 4.1 × 1013 Jones made from dense and ordered polymer films via colloid processing, attributed to their substantially lower energy disorder and fewer traps than those deposited via traditional solution processing. Detectable light intensities as weak as approaching 0.1 pW cm−2 of colloid-processed OPDs (CP-OPDs) at visible to near-infra-red light are achieved, on par with the premium commercial Si photodiode and overwhelming some widely used models. Highly sensitive and accurate monitoring of trace dye pollutants/chlorophyllin A analogue in water with a detection limit of 0.02/0.05 mg l−1 (below the discharge/eutrophication standard) is successfully accomplished through the developed CP-OPDs, surpassing the commercial Si photodiode that cannot effectively respond to the concentration below the standard. Colloid processing endows OPDs with the highest detectivity among reported portable photodetectors and makes CP-OPDs superior in in situ monitoring trace contaminants in water relative to traditional methods.

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Fig. 1: Diagram of develo** CP-OPDs for in situ sensitive water monitoring.
Fig. 2: Colloid processing versus solution processing.
Fig. 3: High-detectivity CP-OPDs.
Fig. 4: Water pollution monitoring.
Fig. 5: Superiority of CP-OPD.

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Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or Supplementary Information. The data that support the findings of this study and the raw data for all the figures have been uploaded to Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25470085).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the financial support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB0520102) (Y. Lin), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22105208) (T.L.), and the Bei**g Natural Science Foundation (2232075) (Y. Lin).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Tengfei Li, Gangjian Hu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bei**g National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Laboratory of Organic Solids and Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, China

    Tengfei Li, Hua Wu, Yawen Li, Zesheng Liu, Yan Qiao & Yuze Lin

  2. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, International Center of Future Science, Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Gangjian Hu & Liang Shen

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, China

    Hua Wu, Yawen Li, Zesheng Liu, Yan Qiao & Yuze Lin

  4. State Key Laboratory of Silicon and Advanced Semiconductor Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Li Ding & Yanjun Fang

  5. CAS Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Bei**g, China

    Jianqi Zhang

  6. Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Mengjie Sun & Yuchuan Shao

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  1. Tengfei Li
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Contributions

Y. Lin conceived the idea, designed the experiments and supervised the project. T.L. fabricated and characterized the OPD devices and carried out the measurements of TEM, noise current, FTPS-EQE, tDOS, space-charge limited current and DLCP. G.H. and L.S. conducted the measurements of response time and cut-off frequency and performed the application of water pollution monitoring. H.W. and Y.Q. supplied and optimized the method of colloid preparation and carried out the TEM measurement. L.D. and Y.F. conducted the NEP and LDR measurements. M.S. and Y.S. performed the electron DOS measurement. J.Z. carried out the GIWAXS measurement. Y. Li conducted the AFM measurement. Z.L. assisted in the measurement of DLCP. Y. Lin and T.L. wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed this paper.

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Correspondence to Yan Qiao, Liang Shen or Yuze Lin.

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Nature Water thanks Nicola Gasparini and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Li, T., Hu, G., Wu, H. et al. Highly sensitive water pollution monitoring using colloid-processed organic photodetectors. Nat Water 2, 577–588 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00247-0

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