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A microspectrometer with dual-signal spectral reconstruction

Nature Electronics (2024)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 24 September 2024

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Abstract

Computational spectrometers with small footprints can be integrated with other devices for use in applications such as chemical analysis, medical diagnosis and environmental monitoring. However, their spectral resolution is limited because conventional photoelectric detectors only measure an amplitude-dependent response to incident light. Here we show that a deformable two-dimensional homojunction can be used to create a microspectrometer with dual-signal spectral reconstruction. The semifloating molybdenum disulfide homojunction exhibits a giant electrostriction effect through which the kinetics of photo-generated carriers can be manipulated via an in-plane electric field generated by gate voltage. By leveraging the tunability of both amplitude and relaxation time of the photoelectric response, a dual-signal response can be used with a deep neural network algorithm to reconstruct an incident spectrum. Our dual-signal microspectrometer has a footprint of 20 × 25 µm2, offers a resolution of 1.2 nm and has a spectral waveband number of 380, which is comparable to benchtop spectrometers.

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Fig. 1: Architecture and property of the deformable 2D homojunction.
Fig. 2: Photoelectric-response mechanism and characteristics of the gate-tunable 2D homojunction.
Fig. 3: Dual-signal spectral reconstruction using the gate-tunable 2D homojunction.
Fig. 4: Practical applications of dual-signal spectral reconstruction.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10052205 (ref. 33). Other data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The custom code used for dual-signal spectral reconstruction is available at https://github.com/iCalculate/Dual-spectral-reconstruction.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. C. Zhou and A. J. Zhou from the Analysis and Testing Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, for the technical support with scanning electron microscopy and Raman imaging. We thank Z. Wang, Y. Yang, D. Xu, S. Deng, X. Wang, P. Li and C. Yang for the constructive discussions. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (reference no. 2021YFA0718800 to J.X.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (reference no. 52372177 to Y.Z.) and Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (reference no. 52001059 to C.W.).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xinchuan Du, Yang Wang, Yi Cui.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Film and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Xinchuan Du, Yang Wang, Yi Cui, Gaofeng Rao, Jianwen Huang, Xinrui Chen, Ting Zhou, Chunyang Wu, Yicheng Zhao & Jie Xiong

  2. College of Information Science and Electronics Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Zongyin Yang

  3. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Hanxiao Cui

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Contributions

X.D. and Y.Z. formulated and directed the research. J.X. supervised the project. X.D. designed and fabricated devices with the assistance of J.H., X.C. and T.Z. X.D. and Y.W. conducted optoelectronic performance characteristic. G.R. and C.W. performed the physical characterization. Y.Z. and X.D. analysed data and provided theoretical explanations. X.D. and Y.C. developed the restructured algorithm and code. T.Z., Y.C. and J.H. provided substantial assistance in practical application demonstrations. X.D. wrote the paper under the direction of Y.Z., H.C., Z.Y. and J.X. All authors participated extensively in scientific discourse, commented on the experimental results and made substantive contributions to the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hanxiao Cui, Yicheng Zhao or Jie Xiong.

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Nature Electronics thanks Yuan Li and Qinghai Song for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–3, Figs. 1–18, Tables 1 and References.

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Du, X., Wang, Y., Cui, Y. et al. A microspectrometer with dual-signal spectral reconstruction. Nat Electron (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-024-01242-9

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