Abstract
A visible light communication (VLC) system using an organic bulk heterojunction photodetector (OPD) is presented. The system has been successfully proven indoors with an audio signal. The emitter consists of three commercial high-power white LEDs connected in parallel. The receiver is based on an organic photodetector having as active layer a blend of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). The OPD is opto-electrically characterized, showing a responsivity of 0.18 A/W and a modulation response of 790 kHz at −6 V.
Highlights
Since the discovery of conducting polymers organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) optoelectronic devices have become very popular during the last years [1], due to the advantages they offer over inorganic ones: flexibility, low weight, small size, low cost, simple fabrication techniques, and the possibility of developing components over large areas by means of roll to roll [2] or ink-jetSensors 2013, 13 printing [3]
In this work we demonstrate for the first time a real time visible light communication (VLC) system using as receiver a BHJ
I-V curves, I-P characteristics and frequency response were all performed illuminating the device with a TLLG5400 green LED ((λ = 530 nm, Vishay, Selb, Germany) since absorbance of P3HT:phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) films presents a maximum at 510 nm [30,31]
Summary
Since the discovery of conducting polymers organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) optoelectronic devices have become very popular during the last years [1], due to the advantages they offer over inorganic ones: flexibility, low weight, small size, low cost, simple fabrication techniques, and the possibility of developing components over large areas by means of roll to roll [2] or ink-jet. In the field of detectors, the blend based on P3HT:PCBM has been widely used as active layer for organic solar cells (OSCs), having achieved efficiencies up to 5% for standard structures [5] In recent years this polymer:fullerene blend has attracted great interest for use as an active material in organic photodetectors in the visible region [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Two types of white LEDs are used for illumination and communication applications: (i) separate red-green-blue emitters or (ii) blue emitter combined with a phosphor that emits in the yellow region The latter approach is usually the preferred option because of its lower complexity. The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2.1 we fully describe the OPD fabrication and characterization set up, in Section 2.2 we detail the VLC system layout and in Section 3 we show the photodetector characterization and present the performance of the complete system
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