Graphene-based mid-infrared room-temperature pyroelectric bolometers with ultrahigh temperature coefficient of resistance

There is a growing number of applications demanding highly sensitive photodetectors in the mid-infrared. Thermal photodetectors, such as bolometers, have emerged as the technology of choice, because they do not need cooling. The performance of a bolometer is linked to its temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR, ∼2–4% K(−1) for state-of-the-art materials). Graphene is ideally suited for optoelectronic applications, with a variety of reported photodetectors ranging from visible to THz frequencies. For the mid-infrared, graphene-based detectors with TCRs ∼4–11% K(−1) have been demonstrated. Here we present an uncooled, mid-infrared photodetector, where the pyroelectric response of a LiNbO(3) crystal is transduced with high gain (up to 200) into resistivity modulation for graphene. This is achieved by fabricating a floating metallic structure that concentrates the pyroelectric charge on the top-gate capacitor of the graphene channel, leading to TCRs up to 900% K(−1), and the ability to resolve temperature variations down to 15 μK.