Plasmonic Photodetectors

Plasmonic photodetectors are attracting the attention of the photonics community. Plasmonics is attractive because metallic structures have the ability to confine light by coupling an electromagnetic wave to charged carrier oscillations at the surface of the metal. The wavelength of such oscillation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE journal of selected topics in quantum electronics Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. 1 - 13
Main Authors Dorodnyy, Alexander, Salamin, Yannick, Ping Ma, Plestina, Jelena Vukajlovic, Lassaline, Nolan, Mikulik, Dmitry, Romero-Gomez, Pablo, Fontcuberta i Morral, Anna, Leuthold, Juerg
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.11.2018
Subjects
Detectors
Hot carriers
Metals
nanotechnology
nanowires
Optical waveguides
Photodetectors
Plasmons
Schottky diodes
silicon-compatible photonics
uni-traveling-carrier
waveguides
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Summary:Plasmonic photodetectors are attracting the attention of the photonics community. Plasmonics is attractive because metallic structures have the ability to confine light by coupling an electromagnetic wave to charged carrier oscillations at the surface of the metal. The wavelength of such oscillations can be much smaller than the corresponding light wavelength in vacuum. This enables the light-matter interaction on a deep subwavelength scale, which in turn allows for more compact and potentially higher speed devices. In this review, we discuss different types of photodetectors and ways in which plasmonics can be applied to them. We elucidate several plasmonic photodetector concepts/schemes and discuss the main physical principles behind their operation. Finally, we reflect on the characteristics of an "ideal" photodetector and propose a device that might be the perfect plasmonic detector.
ISSN:1077-260X
1558-4542
DOI:10.1109/JSTQE.2018.2840339