Impact of optical antenna and plasmonics on infrared imagers

The advent of nanophotonics allows devising and fabricating optical antenna as the advanced optical structures that can enhance light–matter interaction in quantum structures such as quantum wells. Improving infrared photodetector performance is discussed theoretically in this paper. We also investigate our recent demonstration of optical antenna integrated on quantum well infrared photodetector which improves the performance of the detector as can be evidence in responsivity of the detector.

► Infrared detectors operating in the mid and long-infrared suffer from weak light-matter interaction.
► We developed optical antenna that enhance light-matter interaction, leading to enhanced responsivity and detectivity.
► We demonstrated long-IR detectors that show enhanced light-matter interaction experimentally.
► The measured performance shows good agreement to our 3D numerical modeling results.
► We have also demonstrated other IR devices that benefit from optical antenna with significant enhancements.