Near-Sensing Real-Time Solution Concentration Detection Enabled by van der Waals Heterojunction Photodetector in Edge Computing System

The relentless advancement of computing technologies in the era of the Internet of Things has escalated the demand for high-speed real-time data processing. Conventional cloud-centric architectures face inherent limitations in latency, energy efficiency, and data security, while edge computing emerges as a transformative solution by proximal data processing. Here, we fabricate a high-performance ultraviolet photodetector based on WTe2/GaN van der Waals heterojunction and employ it as the core sensing unit to construct an edge-native intelligence computing system for localized low-latency solution concentration analysis. The photodetector with type-II band alignment shows high responsivity, fast response time, and low dark current simultaneously. Based on that, this system is capable of conducting real-time calculations on the sensing data near the photodetector. By deploying optimized tiny algorithms for the microprogrammed control unit on this system, a high identification accuracy of 92.78% is achieved for Vitamin B2 solutions. The power consumption and latency of this system are 65.94% and 78.9% lower than the results of the cloud computing system, which effectively avoids data security issues through near-sensing calculations. This work not only provides a viable pathway for high-accuracy and low-latency solution concentration sensing but also reveals the great potential of 2D materials in edge computing systems.