Supercapacitors, as one of the energy storage devices, exhibit ultrahigh capacitance, high power density, and long cycle. High specific surface area, mechanical and chemical stability, and low cost are often required for supercapacitor materials. Graphene, as a new emerging carbon material, has attracted a lot of attention in energy storage field due to its intrinsic properties. Polymers are often incorporated into graphene for a number of enhanced or new properties as supercapacitors. In this paper, different polymers which are used to form composite materials for supercapacitor applications are reviewed. The functions, strategies, and the enhanced properties of graphene and polymer composites are discussed. Finally, the recent development of graphene and polymers for flexible supercapacitors are also discussed.

In this paper, high-speed surface-illuminated Ge-on-Si pin photodiodes with improved efficiency are demonstrated. With photon-trapping microhole features, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the Ge-on-Si pin diode is $>80\%$ at 1300 nm and 73% at 1550 nm with an intrinsic Ge layer of only 2 μm thickness, showing much improvement compared to one without microholes. More than threefold EQE improvement is also observed at longer wavelengths beyond 1550 nm. These results make the microhole-enabled Ge-on-Si photodiodes promising to cover both the existing C and L bands, as well as a new data transmission window (1620–1700 nm), which can be used to enhance the capacity of conventional standard single-mode fiber cables. These photodiodes have potential for many applications, such as inter-/intra-datacenters, passive optical networks, metro and long-haul dense wavelength division multiplexing systems, eye-safe lidar systems, and quantum communications. The CMOS and BiCMOS monolithic integration compatibility of this work is also attractive for Ge CMOS, near-infrared sensing, and communication integration.

Enhancing photon detection efficiency and time resolution in photodetectors in the entire visible range is critical to improve the image quality of time-of-flight (TOF)-based imaging systems and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). In this work, we evaluate the gain, detection efficiency, and timing performance of avalanche photodiodes (APD) with photon trapping nanostructures for photons with 450 nm and 850 nm wavelengths. At 850 nm wavelength, our photon trapping avalanche photodiodes showed 30 times higher gain, an increase from 16% to >60% enhanced absorption efficiency, and a 50% reduction in the full width at half maximum (FWHM) pulse response time close to the breakdown voltage. At 450 nm wavelength, the external quantum efficiency increased from 54% to 82%, while the gain was enhanced more than 20-fold. Therefore, silicon APDs with photon trapping structures exhibited a dramatic increase in absorption compared to control devices. Results suggest very thin devices with fast timing properties and high absorption between the near-ultraviolet and the near infrared region can be manufactured for high-speed applications in biomedical imaging. This study paves the way towards obtaining single photon detectors with photon trapping structures with gains above 10⁶ for the entire visible range.

Entangled carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were synthesized on a flexible carbon fabric (CF) via water-assisted chemical vapor deposition at 800°C at atmospheric pressure utilizing iron (Fe) nanoparticles as catalysts, ethylene (C₂H₄) as the precursor gas, and argon (Ar) and hydrogen (H₂) as the carrier gases. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and electron dispersive spectroscopy were employed to characterize the morphology and structure of the CNFs. It has been found that the catalyst (Fe) thickness affected the morphology of the CNFs on the CF, resulting in different capacitive behaviors of the CNF/CF electrodes. Two different Fe thicknesses (5 and 10 nm) were studied. The capacitance behaviors of the CNF/CF electrodes were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry measurements. The highest specific capacitance, approximately 140 F g⁻¹, has been obtained in the electrode grown with the 5-nm thickness of Fe. Samples with both Fe thicknesses showed good cycling performance over 2,000 cycles.

Photodetectors (PDs) used in communication systems require ultrafast response, high efficiency, and low noise. PDs with such characteristics are increasingly in demand for data centers, metro data links, and long-haul optical networks. In a surface-illuminated PD, high speed and high efficiency are often a tradeoff, since a high-speed device needs a thin absorption layer to reduce the carrier transit time, whereas a high-efficiency device needs a thick absorption layer to compensate for the low absorption coefficient of some semiconductors such as Si and Germanium (Ge) or SiGe alloys at wavelengths near the bandgap. In this part of this review, we present the recent efforts in enhancing the photon-material interactions by using low-dimensional structures that can control light for more interaction with the photoabsorbing materials, slow down the propagation group velocity and reduce surface reflection. We present recent demonstrations of high-speed PDs based on nanostructures enabled by both synthetic bottom-up or transformative top-down processing methods. In particular, we detail a CMOS-compatible ultrafast surface-illuminated Si PD with 30-ps full-width at half-maximum, and >50% efficiency at 850 nm. A complementary discussion on device challenges and the integration of low-dimensional structures will be presented in the part II of this review.