Flexible Free-Standing Infrared Photothermoelectric Detector Based on Graphene/PEDOT

A novel flexible free-standing infrared graphene-based photothermoelectric detector has been designed and fabricated without any substrate support. The integration of polymers with nanomaterials has significantly enhanced the compatibility of multi-functional detection technologies. By combining graphene with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) polymer to form composites, the final photodetectors have performed high flexibility with bending treatments. The signal under blackbody infrared source radiation has been collected and compared across different graphene loadings, where 10 wt% loading of graphene achieved the highest photoresponsivity under peak wavelength at 4.3 micrometer within 6 seconds response time. It achieves maximum 2.27$mV/W$photoresponsivity with 6.95$ \times {10^5}\;cm \cdot H{z^{1/2}}/W$detectivity, which is 5 times higher than pure PEDOT: PSS-based detector. These findings provide valuable insights for advancing graphene-based composites in real-time infrared detection applications.