The Use of Nucleobases in Organic Photodiodes

Recently there has been research made into the use of natural materials, derived from plants and animals, in electronic devices, this field is known as natural electronics. These materials are of particular interest due to the advantages of natural bio-materials. Natural electronics are readily available, biodegradable, renewable, and cheap. By using these materials we can develop environmentally friendly electronic devices. We studied the effects of the nucleobases adenine and uracil, as contact modification layers and interlayers, on pentacene based organic photodetectors (OPDs). The OPDs were fabricated using all dry processing to enable fabrication on flexible substrates, such as paper or plastic. We found that a uracil interlayer enhanced photo-responsivity in pentacene based Schottky photodiodes. The fabricated OPDs are designed to work as red light sensors for application in quantitative analysis of lateral flow immunoassay devices (LFIA). Our uracil enhanced devices have responsivities up to 299 mA/W for light of 633 nm wavelength, compared to the devices without uracil having only 81 mA/W.