Plasmonic photodetectors have many useful characteristics, such as wavelength- or polarization-specific photodetection. Although reconfigurable plasmonic structures have been intensively studied, reconfiguration of the optical characteristics of a plasmonic photodetector has not yet been reported. Here, we report a gold diffraction-grating-type plasmonic photodetector that reconfigures its optical characteristics with a MEMS deformable cantilever. By reconfiguring the photodetector characteristics using an angular scan of the cantilever over −21° to 21°, the peak shifts of the photocurrent signal waveform are found to depend on the wavelength over 1200∼1500 nm, which is consistent with SPR theory. The proposed reconfigurable plasmonic photodetector allowed us to obtain spectroscopic information on the light in a demonstration experiment.

This paper reports on gas sensing based on near-infrared (NIR) reconstructive spectroscopy using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) photodetector. The reconstructive spectrometer consists of an Au grating structure on an n-type silicon substrate. When the Au grating is irradiated with transverse magnetic polarized light, SPR emerges at different incident angles for each wavelength, producing an electric current via the Schottky barrier at the Au/n-type Si interface. The irradiated light spectrum can be derived by analyzing the relationship between the incident angle and the current. The proposed reconstructive spectrometer presented a 20 nm wavelength resolution in the NIR region. NIR light absorption appeared at approximately 1392 nm in the 1.5% ethanol gas spectrum by the SPR photodetector, which is coherent with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, indicating that the proposed reconstructive spectrometer is applicable to gas measurements.

Plasmonic photodetectors have received increasing attention because their detection properties can be designed by tailoring their metal structures on surfaces without using any additional components. Reconfiguration of the plasmonic resonant state in a photodetector is relevant for various applications, including investigating in situ adaptive detection property changes, depending on the situation, and performing single-pixel spectroscopy in geometrically limited regions. However, the spectral responsivity change with conventional reconfiguration methods is relatively small. Here, we propose a plasmonic photodetector that reconfigures its spectral responsivity with electromechanical deformation instead of bias tuning. The photodetector consists of a gold plasmonic grating formed on an n-type silicon cantilever, and the spectral responsivity is reconfigured by electromechanically scanning at an incident angle to the grating on the cantilever. The photodetector exhibits peak shifts in spectral responsivity in a wavelength range from 1250 to 1310 nm after electromechanical reconfiguration. Finally, for potential future applications, we demonstrate near-infrared spectroscopy using the photodetector. This photodetector has the potential to be adopted as a near-infrared spectrometer in industrial silicon imaging systems because its structure enables subbandgap photodetection on silicon by a Schottky junction.

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