Broadband multi-wavelength optical sensing based on photothermal effect of 2D MXene films

Two-dimensional (2D) materials were widely used in sensing owing to the tunable physical or chemical properties. For years, optical sensing attracted a massive amount of attention on account of high accuracy, high security, non-invasive measurement, and strong anti-interference ability. Among the various optical sensing schemes, multi-wavelength optical sensing (MWOS) is an important branch and widely adopted in optical image, spectroscopy, or bio/chemical research. However, no spectral selectivity, limited working wavelength range, or intrinsic instability makes conventional 2D materials unsuitable for MWOS. A new class of 2D materials, known as MXene, exhibits outstanding electronic, optical, and thermal properties, leading to new applications in optical sensing. In this paper, we propose an integrated photothermal optical sensor (PHOS) using Ti3C2Tx MXene films. Thanks to the inherent spectral dependence of Ti3C2Tx MXene over a broadband range, the proposed PHOS can respond to different wavelengths from visible to short-wavelength infrared. Because of the efficient photothermal conversion, the PHOS has a control efficiency up to 0.19 π · mW−1 · mm−1 under 980-nm laser pumping and shows a higher control efficiency under red light (690 nm) irradiation. The measured response time of the proposed PHOS is 23.4 μs. This paper brings MXene into chip-integrated optical sensing fields for the first time and shows the potential applications.