Organic Photodetector Directly Deposited onto the Cut End of a Plastic Optical Fiber

We propose a system where an Organic PhotoDetector (OPD) is realized directly onto the cleaved surface of a standard polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)-based Plastic Optical Fiber (POF). The OPD photoactive layer is based on the bulkheterojunction of [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester with a squaraine dye, whose absorption spectrum well matches the POF minimum loss window in the red (around 650nm). The device is realized by consecutively depositing the solutionprocessed transparent anode on the fiber surface, the solutionprocessed active layer and the evaporated aluminum cathode. When tested with monochromatic pulsed light at a wavelength of 660nm, the POF-OPD system showed the capability of operating up to a 10MHz repetition frequency, not far from the POF intrinsic bandwidth limitation. This promising result represents a first step towards the development of all-organic integrated optical data links.