Hyperdoped silicon photodetectors enable room-temperature computational SWIR imaging at 1550 nm
Abstract
Silicon's bandgap inherently restricts its photodetection to wavelengths below 1100 nm, necessitating the integration of costly III-V semiconductors for short-wave infrared applications. Hyperdoping silicon beyond the solid solubility limit offers a promising "silicon-native" alternative, yet achieving practical short-wave infrared applications at room temperature remains a formidable challenge. Here, we demonstrate a high-detectivity hyperdoped silicon photodetector enabling room-temperature computational short-wave infrared imaging beyond Si bandgap wavelength at {\lambda} = 1550 nm. By integrating an ultrafast laser heating process step to reduce the dark current while keeping high responsivity, we achieve a specific detectivity D^* exceeding 10^9 Jones for 1550 nm at room temperature working in a forward-biased, photoconductive mode. The improved detectivity, coupled with a 59.4 dB linear dynamic range and kHz-scale bandwidth, allows us to demonstrate a single-pixel imaging system that reconstructs 1550 nm scenes at 65x63 pixels without cryogenic cooling. Our devices simultaneously support visible-light imaging, offering a path toward monolithically integrated, multispectral Si-native optical sensors. These results establish ultrafast-laser hyperdoped silicon as a viable platform for low-cost, room-temperature, short-wave infrared photonics, bridging the gap between advanced materials science and practical computational imaging system.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.22470,
title = {Hyperdoped silicon photodetectors enable room-temperature computational SWIR imaging at 1550 nm},
author = {Xiaolong Liu and Sören Schäfer and Jinyuan Chen and Patrik Mc Kearney and Simon Paulus and Varsha Ashwin Vedaraj and Ville Vähänissi and Stefan Kontermann and Kenneth Crozier and James Bullock and Hele Savin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.22470},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
30 pages including Supplementary Information; 4 main figures, 4 supplementary figures, and 1 supplementary table