Resonant InGaAs Detectors and Emitters for Passive and Active Imaging Application

In this work, we designed a wavelength-selective thermal meta-emitter consisting of a periodic array of rings. These rings generate localized surface plasmons to provide large emissivity, narrow band, and highly directional thermal radiation. The large emissivity enables large power throughput. The narrow spectrum matches the GaSb PV cell absorption spectrum and thus reduces the power wasted in the cell and increase the power conversion efficiency (PCE). The collimated emission enables large distance between emitter and cell distance to reduce convectional heating of PV cells. The emitter consists of a thin dielectric layer with an etched ring surface, and this surface is covered with a metal. Thermal emission emerges from the planar side of the dielectric surface when the metal cover is heated by a thermal source. We model different dielectric and metal materials to determine the optimum choice of materials for the meta-emitter. The considered materials are SiC and AlN for dielectric and gold, tungsten, rhodium, tantalum, molybdenum, niobium, chromium, and platinum for metal. We found that while AlN provides a larger power selectivity, SiC yields a better overall PCE because of the better matched emission spectrum with the GaSb PV cell. For the metal cover, we found that tantalum has the second largest power selectivity after gold. Since gold has a low melting point unsuitable for high temperature TPV operation, tantalum becomes the most suitable material for the meta-emitter.

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“…3 (c) and (d). 20,21 The directions of these dipole components align with the E field directions in Fig. 3(d).…”

Section: First Meta Emitter Designmentioning

confidence: 61%

Wavelength-selective thermal meta-emitters for thermophotovoltaic power generation

Choi

Oduor

Dutta

2023

Energy Harvesting and Storage: Materials, Devices, and Applications XIII

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“…The modeled P out /P in thus cannot represent LEE of the mode in this case. 30 The small P out /P in is then more indicative of the inefficiency of the mode generation rather than a small LEE of the mode. At the shorter end of the modeled spectrum, the rings generally interact with incident light through collective diffraction rather than through LSP excitations, there will not be corner anti-nodes.…”

Section: Light Extraction Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

High efficiency metastructure-based emitter and photodetector for imaging

Choi¹,

Oduor²,

Dhar³

et al. 2023

Image Sensing Technologies: Materials, Devices, Systems, and Applications X

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In this work, we design an InGaAs avalanche photodiode (APD) with a higher photocurrent to dark current ratio than a conventional APD. The improvement is based on optical confinement in an optical resonant metastructure, which increases the optical intensity in the detector volume and thus its quantum efficiency. With optical confinement, the absorbing layer can be 20 times thinner than the conventional APD, reducing the intrinsic generation-recombination dark current by the same amount and still be able to produce 90.9% of the photocurrent. The photocurrent to intrinsic dark current ratio can thus be increased theoretically by 18.2 times in concomitant with a lower operating voltage. Higher photocurrent can also be obtained using a thicker absorber. Besides APDs, the optical resonator structure can also be applied to p-i-n photodiodes for similar improvement. To further increase the detection sensitivity, we design an efficient InGaAsP light emitting diode (LED) having a similar resonator geometry. The resonator geometry enables more collimated emission and increases the optical power theoretically by more than 36 times compared to a conventional LED. Integrating the meta- APD and LED together will yield a powerful SWIR transceiver for various low light, LIDAR, and 3-dimensional imaging applications.

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“…7 for active imaging. 8 The metastructure (MS) is first designed to detect efficiently near  0 = 1.064 m. By the antenna reciprocity theorem, the same MS will also emit efficiently near the same wavelength.…”

Section: Ingaasp Meta Emittermentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon meta-APD integrated with InGaAsP meta-emitter for near-infrared (NIR) for active imaging and LIDAR

Choi¹,

Oduor²,

Dutta³

2023

Image Sensing Technologies: Materials, Devices, Systems, and Applications X

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The detection of Nd: YAG laser emission at 1.064 microns is important for a number of applications such as active infrared imaging and space LIDAR. We propose a silicon avalanche photodiode (APD) based on micro-scaled photonic metastructures. In one approach, the metastructure contains a hexagonal hole array filled with SiO 2 to yield optical diffraction and trapping. With 3D electromagnetic modeling, we optimize the array dimensions and yield 26.0% theoretical absorption at 1.064 microns. It is 59 times larger than that of the planar structure with an additional 18% dark current reduction. In another approach, the metastructure contains a ring array fabricated on the top contact layer to excite localized surface plasmons. The theoretical QE is 52 times larger and the dark current is 8.6 times lower. In addition to active imaging and LIDAR, the present meta-APD designs are also useful for broadband passive imaging, in which I p /I d can be improved by 3.9 and 8.7 times, respectively. The ring metastructure can also be integrated with an InGaAsP light emitting diode to produce coherent, directional emission at 1.064 micron to further improve SWaP in active applications.

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Resonant InGaAs Detectors and Emitters for Passive and Active Imaging Application

Cited by 3 publications

References 31 publications

Wavelength-selective thermal meta-emitters for thermophotovoltaic power generation

Wavelength-selective thermal meta-emitters for thermophotovoltaic power generation

High efficiency metastructure-based emitter and photodetector for imaging

Silicon meta-APD integrated with InGaAsP meta-emitter for near-infrared (NIR) for active imaging and LIDAR

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