Surface plasmon enhanced photodetectors based on internal photoemission

Abstract

Surface plasmon photodetectors are of broad interest. They are promising for several applications including telecommunications, photovoltaic solar cells, photocatalysis, color-sensitive detection, and sensing, as they can provide highly enhanced fields and strong confinement (to subwavelength scales). Such photodetectors typically combine a nanometallic structure that supports surface plasmons with a photodetection structure based on internal photoemission or electron-hole pair creation. Photodetector architectures are highly varied, including waveguides, gratings, nanoparticles, nanoislands, or nanoantennas. We review the operating principles behind surface plasmon photodetectors based on the internal photoelectric effect, and we survey and compare the most recent and leading edge concepts reported in the literature. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Porous Ag/TiO2-Schottky-diode based plasmonic hot-electron photodetector with high detectivity and fast response

“…The combination of an appropriate plasmonic metal and semiconductor to form a metal/semiconductor Schottky junction can transform light energy to other forms of energy via the plasmonic hot-electrons, and they have a wide application in photocatalysis [2], photoelectrochemical water splitting [3], photovoltaic conversion [4], photodetection [5][6][7] and so on. The plasmonic hotelectron photodetector composed of a metal/semiconductor Schottky junction is a new kind of photodetector [8][9][10][11] which has the advantages of enabling a response to the photons with energy below the bandgap of the semiconductor substrate and having a tunable spectral response peak by simply adjusting the metal nanostructure [7,12], therefore attracting a great deal of attention. In the past several years, much effort has been focused on improving the performance of photovoltaic hot-electron photodetectors.…”

Surface plasmon enhanced infrared photodetection

“…The quasi particle of light and collective electron oscillations along the metal-dielectric interface is referred to as surface plasmon polariton (SPP), which supports intense electromagnetic confinement in the deep subwavelength dimension 21 . The SPPs can be conventionally divided into two groups: propagating SPPs and localized SPPs.…”

“…The applications of surface plasmons in solar cell, biosensor, and manipulating light have been excellently reviewed [21][22] . This article will focus on the recent developments in surface plasmon enhanced infrared photodetection.…”

Near‐Surface Buried Plasmonic Nanoparticles in Glass as Novel Nonlinear Saturable Absorbers for Ultrafast Lasers

“…[ 14–16 ] The incoming light is partly absorbed, exciting nonthermal hot carrier generation via Landau damping, subsequently relaxing through electron–electron interactions within 100 fs and electron–phonon interactions with a few picoseconds. [ 17–19 ] Due to the excellent third‐order nonlinear optical properties including a large third‐order nonlinear susceptibility, an ultrafast recovery time, and the controllable modulation parameters, metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have exhibited a strong saturable absorption effect and have been applied in the passively Q‐switched and mode‐locked pulsed lasers. [ 20–24 ] Nevertheless, the degradation of optical features and surface contamination usually happen for the chemically synthesized NPs under the long‐term exposure in air; [ 20–23 ] as a result, the laser stability declines sharply.…”