Aligned Phthalocyanine Molecular Nanowires by Graphoepitaxial Self-Assembly and Their In Situ Integration into Photodetector Arrays

Large-scale on-chip integration of organic nanowire-based devices requires the deterministic assembly of organic small molecules into highly-aligned nanowires. In this work, phthalocyanine molecules are self-assembled into horizontally-aligned nanowires after generating parallel hydrophobic nanogrooves on a sapphire surface. In contrast to previous self-oriented inorganic nanowires, these molecular nanowires are separated from their supporting sapphire by an ultrathin amorphous layer, indicating a complete elimination of lattice matching between nanowires and substrates. Therefore, small molecules beyond phthalocyanines hold promise to form aligned nanowires using this graphoepitaxial self-assembly strategy. The excellent alignment and high crystallinity of these nanowires enable the desired in-situ integration of nanowire-based devices without additional postgrowth processing steps. As a proof of concept, self-oriented CuPc nanowires are integrated into photodetector arrays directly on their growth substrate after electrode arrays are transferred onto the nanowires. Compared to previous CuPc photodetectors constructed using other approaches, these detectors exhibit a faster response to the spectrum in the 488-780 nm range (rise and fall times are 0.05-0.43 s and 0.38-2.34 s, respectively) while offering comparable detectivities (2.49 x 10(10) Jones on average). This graphoepitaxial self-assembly offers new opportunities for the aligned growth of organic crystalline nanowires and their large-scale in-situ integration into functional devices.