In this work, we propose and evaluate a concept for a selective thermal emitter based on Tamm plasmons suitable for monolithic on-chip integration and fabrication by conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible processes. The original design of Tamm plasmon structures features a purely one-dimensional array of layers including a Bragg mirror and a metal. The resonant field enhancement next to the metal interface corresponding to optical Tamm states leads to resonant emission at the target wavelength, which depends on the lateral dimensions of the bandgap structure. We demonstrate the application of this concept to a silicon slab structure instead of deploying extended one dimensional layers thus enabling coupling into slab waveguides. Here we focus on the mid-infrared region for absorption sensing applications, particularly on the CO2 absorption line at 4.26 µm as an example. The proposed genetic-algorithm optimization process utilizing the finite-element method and the transfer-matrix method reveals resonant absorption in case of incident modes guided by the slab and, by Kirchhoff’s law, corresponds to emittance up to 90% depending on different choices of the silicon slab height when the structure is used as a thermal emitter. Although we focus on the application as an emitter in the present work, the structure can also be operated as an absorber providing adjusted lateral dimensions and/or exchanged materials (e.g., a different choice for metal).

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Plasmonic slot waveguides have attracted much attention due to the possibility of high light confinement, although they suffer from relatively high propagation loss originating from the presence of a metal. Although the tightly confined light in a small gap leads to a high confinement factor, which is crucial for sensing applications, the use of plasmonic guiding at the same time results in a low propagation length. Therefore, the consideration of a trade-off between the confinement factor and the propagation length is essential to optimize the waveguide geometries. Using silicon nitride as a platform as one of the most common material systems, we have investigated free-standing and asymmetric gold-based plasmonic slot waveguides designed for sensing applications. A new figure of merit (FOM) is introduced to optimize the waveguide geometries for a wavelength of 4.26 µm corresponding to the absorption peak of CO2, aiming at the enhancement of the confinement factor and propagation length simultaneously. For the free-standing structure, the achieved FOM is 274.6 corresponding to approximately 42% and 868 µm for confinement factor and propagation length, respectively. The FOM for the asymmetric structure shows a value of 70.1 which corresponds to 36% and 264 µm for confinement factor and propagation length, respectively.

The field of mid-infrared (MIR) plasmonics has shown great potential applications in spectroscopic sensing, infrared light sources and detectors. MIR plasmonic materials that are compatible with common fabrication processes may enable cost-effective and reliable plasmonic device platforms. In this work, we examined aluminium metal (Al), gold-tin (AuSn) and titanium-tungsten (TiW) alloys regarding their usability for surface plasmon polariton (SPP) excitation in the MIR regime using a grating configuration. The angle dependence and the influence of varying depths of gratings were numerically and experimentally studied for the chosen materials. The structures were fabricated on eight-inch silicon (Si) substrates and characterized with a free-beam reflection measurement setup in the MIR regime. The fabricated gratings show narrow resonance dips, which are in good agreement with the simulations, revealing that Al, AuSn and TiW alloys are reliable plasmonic materials for MIR plasmonic devices.

The design and modeling of a highly sensitive sensor based on a slot photonic crystal waveguide (slot-PCWG) is presented. The structure consists of cylindrical air rods drilled in a dielectric slab on a triangular lattice, which are filled with SiO2. The waveguide is formed by removing elements from the regular photonic crystal grid in a row, and embedding a slot in the center position. This concept allows for a vast enhancement of the evanescent field ratio, leading to a strong overlap between the field of the waveguide mode and the analyte. In the present work, we show that the sensitivity at the constant slab thickness of the slot-PCWG modes is greatly enhanced, up to a factor of 7.6 compared with the corresponding PCWG modes or Si-slab WGs. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique and plane wave expansion (PWE) methods were used to study the dispersion and profile of the PCWG mode. The simulation results show the potential of this design, which will be fabricated and tested in the following steps of the project.