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2D material photo sensor deposited on optical fibre

Its research team was seeking a sacrificial layer – one on which 2D materials could be made, then used as a carrier film for transport to the target surface, while disappearing once the 2D material has been installed in its new home.

And PMGI, versions of which have been used in the construction of micromachines for a decade, came to the top of the list.

“We’ve spent quite some time to develop this sacrificial layer,” said Rice materials scientist Jun Lou.

According to the university, it appears to work for any 2D material, and had been tried with molybdenum diselenide amongst others.

In a technology demonstrator, a 10nm-thick indium selenide photodetector with gold electrodes was made and transferred to an optical fibre.

Because it was so close, the sensor coupled with the evanescent field of light travelling in the fibre, and was used to read the signal.

The work is described in ‘Near-field coupled integrable two-dimensional InSe photosensor on optical fiber‘, published in ACSnano.

“This paper proposes several interesting possibilities for applying 2D devices in real applications,” said Lou. “For example, optical fibres at the bottom of the ocean are thousands of miles long, and if there’s a problem, it’s hard to know where it occurred. If you have these sensors at different locations, you can sense the damage to the fibre.”