Abstract
The electric currents induced by infrared radiation incident on optical antennas and resonant structures increase their temperature through Joule heating as well as change their elec- tric resistance through the bolometric effect. As the thermo-electric mechanism exists throughout a distributed bolometer, a multiphysics approach was adopted to analyze thermal, electrical, and electromagnetic effects in a dipole antenna functioning as a resonant distributed bolometer. The finite element method was used for electromagnetic and thermal considerations. The results showed that bolometric performance depends on the choice of materials, the geometry of the resonant structure, the thickness of an insulating layer, and the characteristics of a bias circuit. Materials with large skin depth and small thermal conductivity are desirable. The thickness of the SiO2 insulating layer should not exceed 1.2 μm, and a current source for the bias circuit enhances performance. An optimized device designed with the previously stated design rules provides a response increase of two orders of magnitude compared to previously reported devices using the same dipole geometry. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. (DOI: 10.1117/1.JNP.7.073093)
Highlights
The use of metallic structures resonating at optical frequencies is drawing a great deal of attention within the nanoscience and nanotechnology communities
Very interesting applications have appeared in a variety of areas: infrared antenna-coupled detectors, biomedical applications, photonic materials, field enhancement, and energy harvesting.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
We focus our attention on the optimization of the behavior of the bolometric optical antenna as a function of the selected material and the geometric parameters involved in it
Summary
The use of metallic structures resonating at optical frequencies is drawing a great deal of attention within the nanoscience and nanotechnology communities. Very interesting applications have appeared in a variety of areas: infrared antenna-coupled detectors, biomedical applications, photonic materials, field enhancement, and energy harvesting.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] Their response is intrinsically selective to frequency, incidence conditions, and state of polarization of the incoming electromagnetic wavefront The performance of these devices, which we name here as optical nanoantennas, is strongly dependent on their geometry, as it happens with their low-frequency versions.
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