Thin-Film Device Development and Technologies - Sensing Principles and Application-Specific Examples

Advanced on-chip integrated photonic and electronic devices, such as hyperspectral photodetectors, depth sensors or memristors, obtain significant drawbacks with respect to performance and/or the technological integration effort. To overcome such limitations, optimized materials and innovative device concepts were developed to maximize performance and integration densities for specific applications.
The selected thin and ultra-thin film material examples can obtain significant advantages and exhibit fundamentally different and adjustable material properties compared to their bulk monocrystalline counterparts. Exploiting the benefitial properties of two dimensional (2D) and amorphous semiconducting materials allows the development of high-performance optoelectronic devices, especially for sensing applications.
The aim of this work is to demonstrate how novel 2D-material and conventional thin-film semiconductor processing platforms and technologies can be combined to enable a heterogenous device integration on top of chip electronics with enhanced performance.
As device examples, 2D-material heterostructure photodetectors for enhanced sensing applications, nonlinear amorphous silicon and graphene photodetectors for depth sensing as well as thin-film memristors for the development of neuro-inspired “smart” cameras are presented, discussed and compared with the state-of-the-art.