Plasmonic enhanced quantum well infrared photodetector with high detectivity

Abstract

We report a normal-incident quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) strongly coupled with surface plasmon modes. A periodic hole array perforated in gold film was integrated with In0.53Ga0.47As/InP QWIP to convert normal-incident electromagnetic waves into surface plasmon waves, and to excite the intersubband transition of carriers in the quantum wells. The peak responsivity of the photodetector at ∼8 μm was ∼7 A/W at the bias of 0.7 V at 78 K with the peak detectivity as high as ∼7.4×1010 cm Hz1/2/W. The full width at half maximum of the response spectrum was only ∼0.84 μm due to a narrow plasmonic resonance.