Effects of Organic Molecules with Different Structures and Absorption Bandwidth on Modulating Photoresponse of MoS₂ Photodetector

Organic dye molecules possessing modulated optical absorption bandwidth and molecular structures can be utilized as sensitizing species for the enhancement of photodetector performance of semiconductor via photoinduced charge transfer mechanism. MoS2 photodetector were modified by drop-casting of methyl orange (MO), rhodamine 6G (R6G), and methylene blue (MB) with different molecular structures and extinction coefficients, and enhanced photodetector performance in terms of photocurrent, photoresponsity, photodetectivity, and external quantum efficiency were obtained after modification of MO, R6G, and MB, respectively. Furthermore, dyes showed different modulating abilities for photodetector performance after combination with MoS2, mainly due to the variation of molecular structures and optical absorption bandwidth. Among tested dyes, deposition of MB onto monolayer MoS2 grown by CVD resulted in photocurrent ∼20 times as high as pristine MoS2 due to favorable photoinduced charge transfer of photoexcited electrons from flat MB molecules to the MoS2 layer. Meanwhile, the corresponding photoresponsivity, photodetectivity, and an external quantum efficiency are 9.09 A W(1-), 2.2 × 10(11) Jones, 1729% at 610 nm, respectively. Photoinduced electron-transfer measurements of the pristine MoS2 and dye-modified MoS2 indicated the n-doping effect of dye molecules on the MoS2. Additionally, surface-enhanced Raman measurements also confirmed the direct correlation with charge transfer between organic dyes and MoS2 taking into account the chemically enhanced Raman scattering mechanism. Present work provides a new clue for the manipulation of high-performance of two-dimensional layered semiconductor-based photodetector via the combination of organic dyes.