Plasmonic microcavity coupled high extinction ratio polarimetric long wavelength quantum well infrared photodetectors（Invited）

The long wavelength infrared polarimetric detector can greatly improve the recognition ability of thermal imaging. Owing to the physical limitation of the diffraction limit, the polarization extinction ratio of the current micro-grid polarizer-type long wavelength infrared polarimetric detectors can basically only be as high as about 10:1. In this paper, a metal/dielectric/metal plasmonic microcavity structure has been fabricated, with the infrared detection active layer of the quantum wells being embedded inside the microcavity. Due to the near-field coupling between the upper grating and bottom reflector metals, a lateral Fabry-Perot resonance was established in the double-metal region, forming the plasmonic microcavity. Benefited from the mode selection characteristics of the microcavity and its resonant coupling with the quantum well intersubband transition, the normal incident light, which cannot be directly absorbed by the intersubband transition of the quantum wells, was coupled into the plasmonic microcavity, transforming its propagation direction into lateral and being absorbed by the quantum wells. The mechanism was confirmed by finite element simulation and the microcavity key parameters such as the grating width and the thicknesses were designed and optimized. Such a structure was applied to the detecting pixels sized at 27 × 27 μm, which was suitable for focal plane arrays. Resulting from the capture and confinement of the incident photons, the detectivity of the detecting pixels could be promoted by about one order of magnitude comparing to the un-structured 45o edge facet coupled detector fabricated from the same epitaxy wafer. The polarization extinction ratio greater than 100:1 at about 13.5 μm of detecting peak wavelength in the long wavelength infrared waveband was achieved, while the peak intensity dependence on the polarizer azimuth angle fitted Malus law very well. Such a work provides a novel physical foundation and technical route for the development of high extinction ratio long wavelength infrared polarimetric imaging focal planes. Copyright ©2021 Infrared and Laser Engineering. All rights reserved.