High-quality Bi₂Te₃ single crystalline films on flexible substrates and bendable photodetectors

Recently, great efforts have been made in the fabrication of arbitrary warped devices to satisfy the requirement of wearable and lightweight electronic products. Direct growth of high crystalline quality films on flexible substrates is the most desirable method to fabricate flexible devices owing to the advantage of simple and compatible preparation technology with current semiconductor devices, while it is a very challenging work, and usually amorphous, polycrystalline or discontinuous single crystalline films are achieved. Here we demonstrate the direct growth of high-quality Bi2Te3 single crystalline films on flexible polyimide substrates by the modified hot wall epitaxy technique. Experimental results reveal that adjacent crystallites are coherently coalesced to form a continuous film, although amounts of disoriented crystallites are generated due to fast growth rate. By inserting a quartz filter into the growth tube, the number density of disoriented crystallites is effectively reduced owing to the improved spiral interaction. Furthermore, flexible Bi2Te3 photoconductors are fabricated and exhibit strong near-infrared photoconductive response under different degrees of bending, which also confirms the obtained flexible films suitable for electronic applications.