Development of flexible and curved infrared detectors with HgTe colloidal quantum dots

Flexible and curved infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) are attracting great interest with increasing demand for sensitive, low-cost and scalable cameras that can achieve wide field of view, low aberrations, and simple imaging optics. The widespread use of such flexible detectors, however, is still limited by the brittle nature of the dominant infrared epitaxial semiconductors like HgCdTe, InSb, and InGaAs, together with their high cost for both growth and processing. In contrast, colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) have inspired various optoelectronic devices benefitting from their solution-processability, mechanical flexibility and wide spectral tunability over important atmospheric windows from short-wave infrared (SWIR, 1.5 – 2.5 µm), mid-wave infrared (MWIR, 3 – 5 µm) to long-wave infrared (LWIR, 8–14 µm). In this review, we summarize the recent progress of CQDs-based infrared optoelectronics regarding device configuration, photodetection properties, device flexibilities and some potential routes leading to infrared imaging FPA.