Plasmon-enhanced photodetection in nanostructures

Abstract

Typical plasmonic nanostructures for the enhancement of photodetection in graphene and other semiconductor materials are reviewed. AbstractPhotodetection which converts the light into electric current, has significant importance in modern physics. For graphene photodetector, the performance is mainly limited by its low external quantum efficiency, mainly due to its poor light absorption properties. While for semiconductor photodetector, photocurrent generation is limited to photon energies above the band gap of the semiconductor. When metallic nanostructure is introduced, on one hand, the plasmon oscillations lead to a dramatic enhancement of the local electric field around graphene, resulting in a significant performance improvement of graphene photodetector, on the other hand, hot electrons from plasmon decay can transfer across the Schottky barrier at the metal-semiconductor interface, resulting in a photocurrent, which is no longer limited to photon energies greater than the band gap of the semiconductor, but rather to photon energies above the Schottky barrier height. Here, we review typical plasmonic nanostructures for the enhancement of photodetection in graphene and other semiconductor materials.

Harvesting the loss: surface plasmon-based hot electron photodetection

“…However, due to their atomic thickness, the light-matter interaction in 2D materials is usually limited. On the contrary, plasmonics enable strong light-matter interaction with 2D materials due to high field concentration [135][136][137][138]. Additionally, it has been shown that surface plasmons in metallic nanoparticles can directly interact with 2D materials through hot electron injection [42,[139][140][141][142][143].…”