AlGaN-based solar-blind ultraviolet photodetectors have attractive potential applications in the fields of missile plume detection, biochemical sensing, solar astronomy, etc. In this work, significant deep ultraviolet detection enhancement is demonstrated on AlGaN-based metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) solar-blind ultraviolet photodetectors by introducing the coupling of localized surface plasmon from Al nanoparticles with the high-Al-content AlGaN epilayer. The size-controlled Al nanoparticle arrays fabricated by nanosphere lithography can not only reduce the detectors' dark current but also bring about greatly enhanced responsivity. The peak responsivity of AlGaN-based MSM solar-blind ultraviolet photodetectors with Al nanoparticles can reach 2.34 A/W at 269 nm under 20 V bias, enhanced more than 25 times than that without Al nanoparticles. Our approach shows an efficient fabrication technique of high-performance and low-cost plasmonic enhanced AlGaN solar-blind MSM ultraviolet photodetectors.
Quantum key distribution (QKD) has been proved to be information-theoretically secure in theory. Unfortunately, the imperfect devices in practice compromise its security. Thus, to improve the security property of practical QKD systems, a commonly used method is to patch the loopholes in the existing QKD systems. However, in this work, we show an adversary’s capability of exploiting the imperfection of the patch itself to bypass the patch. Specifically, we experimentally demonstrate that, in the detector under test, the patch of photocurrent monitor against the detector blinding attack can be defeated by the pulse illumination attack proposed in this paper. We also analyze the secret key rate under the pulse illumination attack, which theoretically confirmed that Eve can conduct the attack to learn the secret key. This work indicates the importance of inspecting the security loopholes in a detection unit to further understand their impacts on a QKD system. The method of pulse illumination attack can be a general testing item in the security evaluation standard of QKD.
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