Facile Fabrication of Highly Uniform Tellurium Nanorods for Self-Powered Flexible Optoelectronics

Nanoscale tellurium (Te) materials are promising for advanced optoelectronics owing to their many intriguing properties. However, the facile fabrication of highly uniform 1D Te nanostructures has been a challenge. Herein, an electrochemical exfoliation method is developed to prepare uniform Te nanorod (NRs), which can form stable and high concentration suspension in organic solvents. The morphology of the Te NRs can be well tuned by the electrochemical exfoliation condition. Flexible photodetectors based on Te NRs show an excellent responsivity of 6.1 A W-1. The detectivity achieves 1.2 x 10(11) Jones, which is the highest among Te-based photodetectors. Moreover, self-powered photodetectors based on Te NRs are successfully fabricated, which exhibits a responsivity of 3 mu A W-1. This new method paves the way for the applications of Te NRs in self-powered flexible optoelectronics.