Plasmonic semiconductor nanogroove array enhanced broad spectral band millimetre and terahertz wave detection

Jinchao Tong,Fei Suo,Zhiming Huang,Junhao Chu,Tianning Zhang,Dao Hua Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41377-021-00505-w

Abstract

High-performance uncooled millimetre and terahertz wave detectors are required as a building block for a wide range of applications. The state-of-the-art technologies, however, are plagued by low sensitivity, narrow spectral bandwidth, and complicated architecture. Here, we report semiconductor surface plasmon enhanced high-performance broadband millimetre and terahertz wave detectors which are based on nanogroove InSb array epitaxially grown on GaAs substrate for room temperature operation. By making a nanogroove array in the grown InSb layer, strong millimetre and terahertz wave surface plasmon polaritons can be generated at the InSb–air interfaces, which results in significant improvement in detecting performance. A noise equivalent power (NEP) of 2.2 × 10−14 W Hz−1/2 or a detectivity (D*) of 2.7 × 1012 cm Hz1/2 W−1 at 1.75 mm (0.171 THz) is achieved at room temperature. By lowering the temperature to the thermoelectric cooling available 200 K, the corresponding NEP and D* of the nanogroove device can be improved to 3.8 × 10−15 W Hz−1/2 and 1.6 × 1013 cm Hz1/2 W−1, respectively. In addition, such a single device can perform broad spectral band detection from 0.9 mm (0.330 THz) to 9.4 mm (0.032 THz). Fast responses of 3.5 µs and 780 ns are achieved at room temperature and 200 K, respectively. Such high-performance millimetre and terahertz wave photodetectors are useful for wide applications such as high capacity communications, walk-through security, biological diagnosis, spectroscopy, and remote sensing. In addition, the integration of plasmonic semiconductor nanostructures paves a way for realizing high performance and multifunctional long-wavelength optoelectrical devices.

Highlights

Millimetre and terahertz wave detectors have a wide range of applications in areas such as communications, security, biological diagnosis, spectroscopy, and remote sensing[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Inc.) are in widespread use, they suffer from poor noise equivalent power (NEP), slow response, or narrow spectral bandwidth[9]
The permittivity of the InSb film in millimetre and terahertz wave range is negative in frequency up to ~3 THz or in wavelength down to 0.1 mm at room temperature according to Drude model, which makes InSb is a good plasmonic semiconductor[44,45,46,47,48]

Summary

Introduction

Millimetre and terahertz wave detectors have a wide range of applications in areas such as communications, security, biological diagnosis, spectroscopy, and remote sensing[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor and plasmabased field electric transistor (FET), high-electronmobility transistor and metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor have experienced a development boom, including adoption of Si, SiGe, GaAs/AlGaAs, InGaAs, InGaP/InGaAs/GaAs, and GaN/AlGaN material systems[10,11]. These devices possess multiple electrodes and sub-micrometer scale channels to arouse photoresponse. Millimetre and terahertz wave detectors based on emerging materials[19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33] such as black phosphorus, perovskites, carbon nanotubes, Dirac semimetals, topological insulators, graphene, have been demonstrated with plasmonic, hot electron, and photothermoelectric strategies and an NEP level of 10−11 W Hz−1/2 has been achieved[34]

Methods

Results

Conclusion