Filterless light-ellipticity-sensitive optoelectronic response generally has low discrimination, thus severely hindering the development of monolithic polarization detectors. Here, we achieve a breakthrough based on a configurable circular-polarization-dependent optoelectronic silent state created by the superposition of two photoresponses with enantiomerically opposite ellipticity dependences. The zero photocurrent and the significantly suppressed noise of the optoelectronic silent state singularly enhance the circular polarization extinction ratio (CPER) and the sensitivity to light ellipticity perturbation. The CPER of our device approaches infinity by the traditional definition. The newly established CPER taking noise into account is 3–4 orders of magnitude higher than those of ordinary integrated circular polarization detectors, and it remains high in an expanded wavelength range. The noise equivalent light ellipticity difference goes below 0.009° Hz^−1/2 at modulation frequencies above 1000 Hz by a light power of 281 μW. This scheme brings a leap in developing monolithic ultracompact circular polarization detectors.

Polarization-independent dielectric meta-lens is proposed to monolithically integrate with a HgCdTe infrared photodetector to concentrate power flux into a reduced photosensitive area for performance enhancement. Although a reduction in photosensitive area could suppress the dark current, the more seriously reduced light absorptance would degrade the specific detectivity D^*. The integration of the meta-lens could reverse the situation by improving the absorptance of the photosensitive region. The meta-lens composed of an array of nano-pillars with varying diameters is formed by carving the CdZnTe substrate of the HgCdTe detector so that the integration could be accomplished in situ. The meta-lens focuses the incident light through the CdZnTe medium and at the HgCdTe photosensitive region. The focal spot is about the wavelength size and the focusing efficiency is above 63%. Concerning a HgCdTe detector with a pitch size of 40 μm × 40 μm, when the photosensitive area is reduced to 5 μm × 5 μm, the meta-lens could still keep the light absorptance above 50%, which is 49 times higher than that of the device without the meta-lens. The dark current reduces with the decreasing photosensitive area in a linear manner. When the photosensitive area shrinks from 40 μm × 40 μm to 10 μm × 10 μm or 5 μm × 5 μm, the dark current reduces by 16 or even 64 times. Compared to the pristine device, the employment of the meta-lens together with the reduction in photosensitive area could enhance D^* by 5.5 times for the photosensitive area as 5 μm × 5 μm. Further, the meta-lens exhibits a good dispersion tolerance over the wavelength range from 3.3 μm to 5 μm. The averaged detectivity enhancement over this spectrum range is around 3 times for the photosensitive area as 5 μm × 5 μm. The angular response of the meta-lens integrated detector depends on the focal length. For a focal length of 73 µm or 38 µm, the angle of view for a 5 μm × 5 μm photosensitive area is 4.0° or 7.7°. For the inter-pillar distance to be 2 µm in our design, the influence of the coupling effect between the nano-pillars on the performance of the meta-lens is little.

Advances in symmetry-breaking engineering of heterointerfaces for optoelectronic devices have garnered significant attention due to their immense potential in tunable moiré quantum geometry and enabling polarization light detection. Despite several proposed approaches to breaking the symmetry of low-dimensional materials, there remains a lack of universal methods to create materials with prominent polarization detection capabilities. Here, we introduce a reliable strategy for manipulating the symmetry of low-dimensional materials through a programmable ferroelectric-doping patterns technique. This method introduces a spontaneous photocurrent and enables the detection of linearly polarization light in isotropic 2H-MoTe₂. The 2H-MoTe₂ photodetector exhibits a significant short-circuit photocurrent intensity (J_sc = 29.9 A/cm²) and open-circuit voltage V_oc of 0.12 V ( ~ 3 × 10⁵V/cm). Under a specific bias, the polarization ratio transitions from 1 to ∞/−∞, shifting from a positive state (unipolar regime) to a negative state (bipolar regime). These findings underscore the potential of ferroelectric-doping patterns as a promising approach to creating composite materials with artificial bulk photovoltaic effect and achieving high-performance polarization light detection.