Large near-infrared lateral photovoltaic effect in organic egg albumin/Si structure

Previously reported photoelectric devices mainly were limited to inorganic materials. Even though preparing high-performance photoelectric devices with organic biomaterials is an inevitable trend of commercialization, fabricating organic photoelectric devices based on naturally occurring materials with high sensitivity remains a grand challenge due to the high resistivity and few free electrons in these materials. Herein, high-performance photoelectric devices based on egg albumin (EA)/Si structure were proposed and a new perspective was provided for photodetection in naturally occurring materials by utilizing the surface state of p-Si to separate light-induced carriers effectively. The free electrons in metal atoms restrain the surface states, leading to the sensitivity of 5 mV/mm in metal/Si devices, while the sensitivity was promoted greatly to 357 mW/mm of the EA/Si device in the near-infrared region, which is intimately related to the little effect on the dangling bonds of the surface in EA and is among the most sensitive organic near-infrared photoelectronic device till date. This work opens new avenues to overcome the obstacle of the low sensitivity of organic photodetectors, indicating that the EA/Si device has great potential for future applications in flexible photovoltaic devices.