From Material to Cameras: Low‐Dimensional Photodetector Arrays on CMOS

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in research on low‐dimensional material with exceptional optoelectronic properties. While low‐dimensional materials offer exciting new opportunities for imaging, their integration in practical applications has been slow. In fact, most existing reports are based on single‐pixel devices that cannot rival the quantity and quality of information provided by massively parallelized mega‐pixel imagers based on complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor (CMOS) readout electronics. The first goal of this review is to present new opportunities in producing high‐resolution cameras using these new materials. New photodetection methods and materials in the field are presented, and the challenges involved in their integration on CMOS chips for making high‐resolution cameras are discussed. Practical approaches are then presented to address these challenges and methods to integrate low‐dimensional material on CMOS. It is also shown that such integrations could be used for ultra‐low noise and massively parallel testing of new material and devices. The second goal of this review is to present the colossal untapped potential of low‐dimensional material in enabling the next‐generation of low‐cost and high‐performance cameras. It is proposed that low‐dimensional materials have the natural ability to create excellent bio‐inspired artificial imaging systems with unique features such as in‐pixel computing, multi‐band imaging, and curved retinas.