Tunable enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy surfaces based on thin VO2 films

Abstract

Infrared absorption spectroscopy takes advantage of the electric field enhancement to detect low amounts of materials such as monolayer biomolecules. While the plasmonic field enhancement is the popular approach, it has been demonstrated that the interference-based uniform field enhancement using a simple dielectric/metal structure exhibits higher sensitivity and larger spectral bandwidth for ultrathin materials. Here, we numerically demonstrate that the enhancement bandwidth of such interference coatings can be further increased by inserting a VO2 thin film between the dielectric and metal layers. The field enhancement spectrum blueshifts upon thermally-induced insulator-to-metal transition in the VO2 layer. The structure that maximizes the enhancement bandwidth is determined as 880-nm-thick CaF2 on 350-nm-thick VO2 on optically thick Al. The study is completed with the investigation of using a bottom metal layer as an internal heater to electrothermally induce the phase change.