Sensitive singular-phase optical detection without phase measurements with Tamm plasmons

Abstract

Spectrally-tailored interactions of light with material interfaces offer many exciting applications in sensing, photo-detection, and optical energy conversion. In particular, complete suppression of light reflectance at select frequencies accompanied by sharp phase variations in the reflected signal forms the basis for the development of ultra-sensitive singular-phase optical detection schemes such as Brewster and surface plasmon interferometry. However, both the Brewster effect and surface-plasmon-mediated absorption on planar interfaces are limited to one polarization of the incident light and oblique excitation angles, and may have limited bandwidth dictated by the material dielectric index and plasma frequency. To alleviate these limitations, we design narrow-band super-absorbers composed of plasmonic materials embedded into dielectric photonic nanostructures with topologically-protected interfacial Tamm plasmon states. These structures have planar geometry and do not require nanopatterning to achieve perfect absorption of both polarizations of the incident light in a wide range of incident angles, including the normal incidence. Their absorption lines are tunable across a very broad spectral range via engineering of the photon bandstructure of the dielectric photonic nanostructures to achieve reversal of the geometrical phase across the interface with the plasmonic absorber. We outline the design strategy to achieve perfect absorptance in Tamm structures with dissipative losses via conjugate impedance matching. We further demonstrate via modeling how these structures can be engineered to support sharp asymmetric amplitude resonances, which can be used to improve the sensitivity of optical sensors in the amplitude-only detection scheme that does not require use of bulky and expensive ellipsometry equipment.

Spectral, spatial and polarization-selective perfect absorbers with large magnetic response for sensing and thermal emission control

“…3 (b) is very low (w/d = 6.7%). This drastic difference between the two polarizations combined with the large field enhancement can find applications in sensing such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy or phase-sensing using the spectroscopic ellipsometry [62,69,70]. Moreover, the small areal coverage of the dielectric gives the structure good thermal stability due to efficient heat dissipation through the metal and substrate.…”

Tamm plasmon-polaritons in a metal coated porous silicon photonic crystal

“…Interestingly, the Tamm resonance is associated with a change in the geometric phase between two photonic bands and is topologically protected [25]. To illustrate this point, let us consider a PC made by a repetition of layer A with properties (n A = 2.5, d A = 100 nm) and layer B with (n B = 1.9, d B = 100 nm) in a symmetric unit cell centered around layer B.…”

Narrow‐Band Thermal Emitter with Titanium Nitride Thin Film Demonstrating High Temperature Stability

“…As can be seen in Figure 3d, adding an oxide layer results in an asymmetric A peak due to breaking the quarter‐wavelength optical thickness of the DBR. TPP can be excited by adjusting the equivalent impedance of the whole DBR to match to the impedance of a metal layer, which is demonstrated by Boriskina and Tsurimaki 52. However, to achieve a perfect absorption for a TPP structure, the elimination of the impedance mismatch between the metal layer and the free space is also required.…”