We present an infrared photodetector leveraging an all-epitaxial device architecture consisting of a 'designer' plasmonic metal integrated with a quantum-engineered detector structure, all in a mature III-V semiconductor material system. Incident light is coupled into surface plasmon-polariton modes at the detector/'designer' metal interface, and the strong confinement of these modes allows for a sub-diffractive (∼λ0/33) detector absorber layer thickness, effectively decoupling the detector's absorption efficiency and dark current. We demonstrate high-performance detectors operating at non-cryogenic temperatures (T = 195 K), without sacrificing external quantum efficiency, and superior to well established and commercially-available detectors. This work provides a practical and scalable plasmonic optoelectronic device architecture with real world mid-infrared applications.
@article{arxiv.2107.04143,
title = {Ultra-Thin All-Epitaxial Plasmonic Detectors},
author = {Leland Nordin and Priyanka Petluru and Abhilasha Kamboj and Aaron J. Muhowski and Daniel Wasserman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.04143},
year = {2022}
}