Photothermal-assist enhanced high-performance self-powered photodetector with bioinspired temperature-autoregulation by passive radiative balance

Highlights: • The conflicting functions between photo-heating and cooling, are combined into the same structure for the first time. • This work overcomes the challenge that photothermal-assist enhance photoelectric application. • Performance of self-powered room-temperature photodetector is greatly enhanced by coupling photothermal effect and hot carrier generation. High broadband absorption with low angular dependence is one of the key factors for photoelectronic applications. Photo-heating accelerating carrier transfer, inducing a change in electrical conductance and exciting "hot" electrons promotes a photoelectric response and extends the response photon energies well below the semiconductor band edge. A photodetector requires cooling to prevent overheating and reduce thermal noise, thereby improving photoelectric detection. Here, these distinct, independent functions, especially the conflicting functions between photo-heating and cooling, are combined into the same structure for the first time. We present an innovative approach using a layered MoS₂/nonlayered CdS/Au hybrid heterostructure integrated into a bioinspired sophisticated micro/nanoarchitecture with omnidirectional light-harvesting, effective photothermal conversion and temperature auto-regulation nature to design a self-powered room-temperature photodetector for low angle-dependence and photothermal-assisted broadband photoelectric detection without active cooling. In nearly active areas with a square micron scale, our photodetector attains a responsivity up to 132.06, 122.46 and 74.44 mA/W under an illumination of 660, 808 and 980 nm, respectively, operated under a low bias (0.5 V), which shows a significant advantage over the reported high-performance MoS₂ heterostructure photodetectors. Our work shows the concept that photo-heating can be used to enhance photoelectric detection by passive radiative balance. Thus, this work offers a new way to design a novel broadband room-temperature optoelectronic detector that outperforms conventional photodetectors, enabling new technological capabilities.