Review on flexible perovskite photodetector: processing and applications

Abstract Next-generation optoelectronics should possess lightweight and flexible characteristics, thus conforming to various types of surfaces or human skins for portable and wearable applications. Flexible photodetectors as fundamental devices have been receiving increasing attention owing to their potential applications in artificial intelligence, aerospace industry, and wise information technology of 120, among which perovskite is a promising candidate as the light-harvesting material for its outstanding optical and electrical properties, remarkable mechanical flexibility, low-cost and low-temperature processing methods. To date, most of the reports have demonstrated the fabrication methods of the perovskite materials, materials engineering, applications in solar cells, light-emitting diodes, lasers, and photodetectors, strategies for device performance enhancement, few can be seen with a focus on the processing strategies of perovskite-based flexible photodetectors, which we will give a comprehensive summary, herein. To begin with, a brief introduction to the fabrication methods of perovskite (solution and vapor-based methods), device configurations (photovoltaic, photoconductor, and phototransistor), and performance parameters of the perovskite-based photodetectors are first arranged. Emphatically, processing strategies for photodetectors are presented following, including flexible substrates (i.e., polymer, carbon cloth, fiber, paper, etc.), soft electrodes (i.e., metal-based conductive networks, carbon-based conductive materials, and two-dimensional (2D) conductive materials, etc.), conformal encapsulation (single-layer and multilayer stacked encapsulation), low-dimensional perovskites (0D, 1D, and 2D nanostructures), and elaborate device structures. Typical applications of perovskite-based flexible photodetectors such as optical communication, image sensing, and health monitoring are further exhibited to learn the flexible photodetectors on a deeper level. Challenges and future research directions of perovskite-based flexible photodetectors are proposed in the end. The purpose of this review is not only to shed light on the basic design principle of flexible photodetectors, but also to serve as the roadmap for further developments of flexible photodetectors and exploring their applications in the fields of industrial manufacturing, human life, and health care.