Investigating the Influence of Morphologies and Structural Modifications on the Photoelectric Properties of TiOPc for Improved Photodetection

The unique morphology and structure significantly enhance the performance of photoelectric detection. Herein, titanyl phthalocyanine (TiOPc) coarse crystal and microspheres are obtained by a simple physical vapor deposition (PVD) method designed to produce TiOPc structures that undergo significant changes in the crystal structure. The photoelectric experimental results show that the photocurrent of TiOPc coarse crystal and microspheres increases with the increase of voltage and exhibits better stability compared to the raw materials. Under a bias voltage of 10 V, the photoresponsivity of microspheres reaches the maximum, which is 77 times that of raw materials. Under different monochromatic lights, the raw materials are most sensitive to red light (850 nm), with a photocurrent of 1.3556 × 10⁻⁶ mA, but the coarse crystal/microspheres are most sensitive to blue light (455 nm) with photocurrents of 1.281 × 10⁻⁵ mA/2.609 × 10⁻⁵ mA, respectively. It is worth mentioning that although the photocurrent and responsivity of coarse crystal are slightly lower than those of microspheres, the response speed is faster, with a rise/fall time is 271 and 194 ms, respectively. The good photoelectric properties indicate the potential research value of TiOPc coarse crystal and microspheres in the field of photoelectric detection.