In 2011, Kim and his co-workers reported their achievement of a low-cost upconversion device with infrared sensitivity up to 1.5 μm using PbSe inorganic colloidal nanocrystals as infrared PD. It was the first time that the NIR-to-visible light converter of CQDs’ integrated phosphorescent emitting OLED was reported, the structure and schematic diagram are shown in Figure 1a,b. It must be known that all-organic upconversion devices before this work nearly had no infrared sensitivity beyond 1 μm, moreover, there were not any hybrid devices that could reach a 1.3% photon-to-photon conversion efficiency (that this work obtained) in the past. In contrast to previous studies, Kim et al. employed a wide bandgap ZnO layer as a hole blocking layer to improve the on/off ratio of the device, and the dark current of the device was obviously reduced, moreover the signal-to-noise ratio of the device was increased ^[1].

In 2016, Yu et al. reported a novel upconversion light-emitting phototransistor (LEPT) by incorporating a phosphorescent OLED into a phototransistor. To be different from the ascending upconverters with two terminals, this LEPT is a vertical three-terminal phototransistor with an infrared photoactive gate integrated into an OLED, which has high-efficiency such as its external quantum efficiency (EQE) of up to 1 × 10⁵% and detectivity of 1.23 × 10¹³ Jones ^[2]. The structure of this LEPT is demonstrated in Figure 1c, and a photograph of the sample clamped in the measurement box is shown in Figure 1d. In 2018, Li et al. demonstrated a perovskite LED based on CsPbBr₃ with high performance, it can be processed in solution and has a narrow emission spectrum. Their research proved that the NIR-sensitive polymer DPP–DTT blend with a norfullerene acceptor COi8DFIC is an appropriate layer of charge generation layer for the upconversion procession, as a result of its unique combination of high NIR absorption and low visible light absorption (Figure 1e–g) ^[3]. In 2020, Tang and his co-workers proposed a high conversion efficiency for all QDs-based upconverters (Figure 1h). Former upconversion systems were always manufactured by inorganic semiconductors using wafer fusion technology. However, they were limited by the mismatch of lattice between different semiconductors, leading to poor photonic conversion efficiency. As for the all-organic devices, their efficiency has been improved a lot, but the stability of these upconverters is still a potential issue for their application. In this reference, the use of innately stable, efficient, and high-performance QDs made the device achieve a high photon-to-photon conversion efficiency of 6.3% (Figure 1i), and can be fabricated by solution process ^[4].

In 2020, Ning Zhijun’s research group from ShanghaiTech University integrated CQD infrared detectors and colloidal QLED for the first time to obtain a CQD infrared-to-visible light upconversion device (Figure 2a). This all-CQDs upconversion device had high photonic conversion efficiency of up to 6.5%, and it can be turned on at a low applied bias of only 2.5 V. Through this upconverter the short-wave infrared (Figure 2b) with a power density of 10–600 mW·cm⁻² was converted into visible green light (520 nm) (Figure 2c). Ning’s group incorporated silver nanoparticles in the PD’s layers that can extract charges (Figure 2d) with the aim of optimizing the carrier tunneling and making the PD layer provide enough photocurrent so that the LED can be turned on successfully. This advanced achievement confirms the application of CQDs in upconversion devices and the feasibility of realizing SWIR upconversion imaging ^[5].

In 2020, Motmaen reported a novel and high-performance integrated chip which can realize the upconversion process from MIR (3–5 µm) to the green light (523 nm). This upconversion device was fabricated using a doped PbSe layer as a PD, an NPN (n-type, p-type, n-type) bipolar junction transistor (NPN-BJT) as a current amplifier, and an OLED as an emission layer; its structure is shown in Figure 3a, the energy band diagram is shown in Figure 3b. In this new type of upconverter, PbSe QDs were used to realize the photodetection and generate current, then the output electric information can be amplified by NPN-BJT. With the amplified current the LED can be driven and emits visible green light ^[6]. Under 3 μm MIR light illumination (0.5 mW/cm²) (Figure 3c) and total voltage of 13.5 V, the EQE is calculated to 600% (Figure 3d), such high EQE is mainly thanks to the amplifier function of NPN-BJT.

The liquid semiconductor QDs synthesized by colloidal chemistry can precisely tune the bandgap by adjusting the size, and then achieve tunable infrared photoresponse in a wide spectral range. Therefore, from the above demonstration, it can be seen that the application of CQDs in the field of infrared-to-visible upconversion can realize infrared detection in all main infrared bands of NIR, SWIR, and MIR.

After several decades of development, infrared-to-visible upconversion devices have shown a transition trend from traditional all-inorganic, all-organic, and organic–inorganic materials to emerging liquid CQD materials. The development of infrared-to-visible light upconversion devices based on CQDs has become one of the important trends to achieve wide detecting spectrum, high-performance, low-cost, flexible, and large-area infrared imaging in the future. The performance of the upconversion devices in the references discussed above is shown in Table 1.