Mid-infrared nanometallic antenna assisted silicon waveguide based bolometers

Abstract

The mid-infrared (MIR) wavelength region is attracting more and more research for applications such as medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and free space communications. In the MIR, thermal detectors play an important role because they can operate over a large wavelength range, can be fabricated using CMOS compatible processes, and do not require cooling. Today no other MIR detector technology is able to fill this gap. We demonstrate the first uncooled silicon waveguide-based bolometers, in the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) and suspended silicon waveguide platforms. The bolometers comprise gold plasmonic antennas on the waveguide surface that heat up when they absorb light, and amorphous silicon thermometers (formed by ion implantation), whose electrical resistance changes by 0.90 ± 0.26 % K-1 when they are heated. We show that suspending the bolometers improves their performance, and achieve sensitivities of up to 1.13 ± 0.04 % change in resistance per milliwatt of input power, with a noise equivalent power of 66 μW/√Hz. Calculations suggest the NEP could in future, be further reduced by 4 orders of magnitude.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ahmed Osman: orcid.org/0000-0001-6575-3861

ORCID for Jordi Soler Penadés: orcid.org/0000-0002-1706-8533

ORCID for Otto Muskens: orcid.org/0000-0003-0693-5504

ORCID for Milos Nedeljković: orcid.org/0000-0002-9170-7911

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