Self-standing polyvinyl chloride film as flexible substrate for WSe2 based photodetector

Self-standing polymer materials have gained recognition as a flexible substrate for various optoelectronic devices. Here, we incorporated polyvinyl chloride (PVC) with tungsten diselenide (WSe2) microcrystals. The WSe2 microcrystals are added to PVC by solution mixing process. The WSe2-PVC composite film possess excellent flexibility, electrical conductivity of 20 kΩsq−1 at room temperature, high photoresponsivity of 0.3310 mAW−1, detectivity of 1.527 x 109 Jones and external quantum efficiency up to 8.7%. The free-standing WSe2-PVC photodetectors show durability and reproducibility even after 7 months and show stable photoresponse in the bent state. The visible light WSe2-PVC photodetector is sensitive to different monochromatic radiations (470 nm, 540 nm and 670 nm) and demonstrates potential applications in next-generation wearable optoelectronic devices.