Although two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted considerable research interest for use in the development of innovative wearable optoelectronic systems, the integrated optoelectronic performance of 2D materials photodetectors, including flexibility, transparency, broadband response and stability in air, remains quite low to date. Here, we demonstrate a flexible, transparent, high-stability and ultra-broadband photodetector made using large-area and highly-crystalline WSe2 films that were prepared by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD). Benefiting from the 2D physics of WSe2 films, this device exhibits excellent average transparency of 72% in the visible range and superior photoresponse characteristics, including an ultra-broadband detection spectral range from 370 to 1064 nm, reversible photoresponsivity approaching 0.92 A W(-1), external quantum efficiency of up to 180% and a relatively fast response time of 0.9 s. The fabricated photodetector also demonstrates outstanding mechanical flexibility and durability in air. Also, because of the wide compatibility of the PLD-grown WSe2 film, we can fabricate various photodetectors on multiple flexible or rigid substrates, and all these devices will exhibit distinctive switching behavior and superior responsivity. These indicate a possible new strategy for the design and integration of flexible, transparent and broadband photodetectors based on large-area WSe2 films, with great potential for practical applications in the wearable optoelectronic devices.

The progress in the field of graphene has aroused a renaissance of keen research interest in layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Tungsten disulfide (WS2), a typical TMD with favorable semiconducting band gap and strong light-matter interaction, exhibits great potential for highly-responsive photodetection. However, WS2-based photodetection is currently unsatisfactory due to the low optical absorption (2%-10%) and poor carrier mobility (0.01-0.91 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1)) of the thin WS2 layers grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Here, we introduce pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) to prepare multilayered WS2 films. Large-area WS2 films of the magnitude of cm(2) are achieved. Comparative measurements of a WS2-based photoresistor demonstrate its stable broadband photoresponse from 370 to 1064 nm, the broadest range demonstrated in WS2 photodetectors. Benefiting from the large optical absorbance (40%-85%) and high carrier mobility (31 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1)), the responsivity of the device approaches a high value of 0.51 A W(-1) in an ambient environment. Such a performance far surpasses the CVD-grown WS2-based photodetectors (μA W(-1)). In a vacuum environment, the responsivity is further enhanced to 0.70 A W(-1) along with an external quantum efficiency of 137% and a photodetectivity of 2.7 × 10(9) cm Hz(1/2) W(-1). These findings stress that the PLD-grown WS2 film may constitute a new paradigm for the next-generation stable, broadband and highly-responsive photodetectors.

The successful peeling of graphene heralded the era of van der Waals material (vdWM) electronics. However, photodetectors based on semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), formulated as MX2 (M = Mo, W; X = S, Se), often suffer either poor responsivity or long response time because of their high density of deep-level defect states (DLDSs). Alloy engineering, which can shift the DLDSs to shallow-level defect states, is proposed to be an efficient strategy to solve this problem. However, proof-of-concept is still lacking, which is probably because of the absence of a facile technology to grow high-quality alloyed TMDs. Here, we report the growth of large-scale and high-quality Mo0.5W0.5S2 alloy films via pulsed laser deposition (PLD). We demonstrate that the resulting Mo0.5W0.5S2 photodetector possesses a stable photoresponse from 370 to 1064 nm. The photocurrent exhibits positive dependence on both the source-drain voltage and incident power density, providing good tunability for multifunctional photoelectrical applications. We also establish that, because of the suppression of DLDSs with alloy engineering, the Mo0.5W0.5S2 photodetector achieves a good responsivity of 5.8 A/W and a response time shorter than 150 ms. The working mechanism for the suppression of DLDSs in Mo0.5W0.5S2 is unveiled by qualitatively analyzing the alloying-dressed band structure. In conclusion, the excellent performance of the PLD-grown Mo0.5W0.5S2 photodetector may pave the way for next-generation photodetection. The approach shown here represents a fundamental and universal scenario for the development of alloyed TMDs.

The widespread adoption of on-board volumetric imaging in cancer radiotherapy has stimulated research efforts to develop online adaptive radiotherapy techniques to handle the inter-fraction variation of the patient's geometry. Such efforts face major technical challenges to perform treatment planning in real time. To overcome this challenge, we are developing a supercomputing online re-planning environment (SCORE) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). As part of the SCORE project, this paper presents our work on the implementation of an intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) optimization algorithm on graphics processing units (GPUs). We adopt a penalty-based quadratic optimization model, which is solved by using a gradient projection method with Armijo's line search rule. Our optimization algorithm has been implemented in CUDA for parallel GPU computing as well as in C for serial CPU computing for comparison purpose. A prostate IMRT case with various beamlet and voxel sizes was used to evaluate our implementation. On an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU card, we have achieved speedup factors of 20-40 without losing accuracy, compared to the results from an Intel Xeon 2.27 GHz CPU. For a specific nine-field prostate IMRT case with 5 x 5 mm(2) beamlet size and 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 mm(3) voxel size, our GPU implementation takes only 2.8 s to generate an optimal IMRT plan. Our work has therefore solved a major problem in developing online re-planning technologies for adaptive radiotherapy.

In recent years, owing to the significant applications of health monitoring, wearable electronic devices such as smart watches, smart glass and wearable cameras have been growing rapidly. Gas sensor is an important part of wearable electronic devices for detecting pollutant, toxic, and combustible gases. However, in order to apply to wearable electronic devices, the gas sensor needs flexible, transparent, and working at room temperature, which are not available for traditional gas sensors. Here, we for the first time fabricate a light-controlling, flexible, transparentand working at room-temperature ethanol gas sensor by using commercial ZnO nanoparticles. The fabricated sensor not only exhibits fast and excellent photoresponse, but also shows high sensing response to ethanol under UV irradiation. Meanwhile, its transmittance exceeds 62% in the visible spectral range, and the sensing performance keeps the same even bent it at a curvature angle of 90o. Additionally, using commercial ZnO nanoparticles provides a facile and low-cost route to fabricate wearable electronic devices.

The WS2/Bi2Te3heterojunction has been achievedviapulsed laser deposition and the improvement in the photoresponse has been demonstrated.

α-Ag2WO4 (AWO) has been studied extensively due to its H2 evolution and organic pollution degradation ability under the irradiation of UV light. However, the band gap of AWO is theoretically calculated to be 3.55 eV, resulting in its sluggish reaction to visible light. Herein, we demonstrated that, by using the electronic reconstruction of AWO nanorods upon a unique process of laser irradiation in liquid, these nanorods performed good visible-light photocatalytic organics degradation and H2 evolution. Using commercial AWO powders as the starting materials, we achieved the electronic reconstruction of AWO by a recrystallization of the starting powders upon laser irradiation in liquid and synthesized AWO nanorods. Due to the weak bond energy of AWO and the far from thermodynamic equilibrium process created by laser irradiation in liquid, abundant cluster distortions, especially [WO6] cluster distortions, are introduced into the crystal lattice, the defect density increases by a factor of 2.75, and uneven intermediate energy levels are inset into the band gap, resulting in a 0.44 eV decrease of the band gap, which modified the AWO itself by electronic reconstruction to be sensitive to visible light without the addition of others. Further, the first-principles calculation was carried out to clarify the electronic reconstruction of AWO, and the theoretical results confirmed the deduction based on the experimental measurements.

Layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been proven to be essential building blocks for the high-performance optoelectronic devices as a result of their favorable bandgaps, extraordinary light absorption, and closed surface electronic structures. However, the in-depth exploration of their operating mechanism as insertion layers in heterojunction photodetectors is scarce. Here, we demonstrate that a Bi/Si heterojunction photodetector can achieve a superior performance by inserting a WS2 layer. A high photosensitivity of 1.4 × 10(8) cm(2)/W and an outstanding detectivity of 1.36 × 10(13) cm Hz(1/2) W(-1) are obtained, which are comparable or even surpass those of state-of-art commercial photodetectors. The working mechanism of the Bi/WS2/Si sandwich-structured photodetector is unveiled, including the efficient passivation of the interface, enhancement of light absorption, and selective carrier blocking. Finally, a good voltage tunability of the photoresponse is also demonstrated. These findings are significant to the deep understanding on the integration of layered TMDs with conventional semiconductors, and they provide an attractive methodology to develop layered TMDs in a multi-junction system.