Silicon-based broadband antenna for high responsivity and polarization-insensitive photodetection at telecommunication wavelengths

Abstract

Although the concept of using local surface plasmon resonance based nanoantenna for photodetection well below the semiconductor band edge has been demonstrated previously, the nature of local surface plasmon resonance based devices cannot meet many requirements of photodetection applications. Here we propose the concept of deep-trench/thinmetal (DTTM) active antenna that take advantage of surface plasmon resonance phenomena, three-dimensional cavity effects, and large-area metal/semiconductor junctions to effectively generate and collect hot electrons arising from plasmon decay and, thereby, increase photocurrent. The DTTM-based devices exhibited superior photoelectron conversion ability and high degrees of detection linearity under infrared light of both low and high intensity. Therefore, these DTTM-based devices have the attractive properties of high responsivity, extremely low power consumption, and polarization-insensitive detection over a broad bandwidth, suggesting great potential for use in photodetection and on-chip Si photonics in many applications of telecommunication fields.

Harvesting the loss: surface plasmon-based hot electron photodetection

“…Operating at 0.1 V reverse bias, a responsivity of 5 and 12 mA/W at 1550 and 1300 nm, respectively, has been demonstrated. In addition, large area and low-cost fabrication techniques [88,89] can be used for silicon-based hot electron photodetectors. Hot electron photodetectors can be employed in the visible regime [58,[96][97][98][99] by swapping silicon with larger bandgap materials such as TiO 2 [58, 96-98, 100, 101] and ZnO [99].…”

Hot electron photodetection with spectral selectivity in the C-band using a silicon channel-separated gold grating structure

“…Hot electron photodetectors with these two configurations overcome the native limitations from the bandgap of semiconductors, enabling the selective detection of photons whose energy (hv) is higher than the barrier height (j b ) but lower than the bandgap (E g ) of a semiconductor (i.e., j b <hv<E g ). Therefore, hot electron photodetectors with MS and MSM configurations are capable of achieving photodetection at sub-bandgap energies of semiconductors, extending the photodetection to the near infrared (NIR) range [12,13,21,22].…”

“…In hot electron photodetectors with MS configurations, such as antennas [21,22], metamaterial perfect absorbers [23], Au gratings [24,25], nanowires [26][27][28], waveguides [29,30], and deep-trench/thin-metal structures [31], hot electrons are generated in a single metallic layer and produce a unidirectional photocurrent. In MSM configurations, the semiconductor component is commonly sandwiched between two opposite metallic layers, such as top/bottom or left/right metallic layers, resulting in hot electrons being generated in both metals and transporting in opposite directions.…”

Nanoimprinted Hybrid Metal-Semiconductor Plasmonic Multilayers with Controlled Surface Nano Architecture for Applications in NIR Detectors

“…However, the efficiency of this process is low due to momentum mismatch, low volume of interaction between the incoming photons and the electrons, and, in particular, lack of broadband absorption from the metal. In recent years, several different configurations have been explored for efficient IPE with the help of localized surface plasmon resonance [31,32,33,34,35]. While improvement in efficiency, responsivity, and absorption enhancement have been shown, there is still need for a better Si detector in the NIR and IR regime that offers better quantum efficiency over a broad spectral range within the telecommunication wavelength range.…”