Silicon-based broadband antenna for high responsivity and polarization-insensitive photodetection at telecommunication wavelengths

Although the concept of using local surface plasmon resonance based nanoantenna for photodetection well below the semiconductor band edge has been demonstrated previously, the nature of local surface plasmon resonance based devices cannot meet many requirements of photodetection applications. Here we propose the concept of deep-trench/thin-metal (DTTM) active antenna that take advantage of surface plasmon resonance phenomena, three-dimensional cavity effects, and large-area metal/semiconductor junctions to effectively generate and collect hot electrons arising from plasmon decay and, thereby, increase photocurrent. The DTTM-based devices exhibited superior photoelectron conversion ability and high degrees of detection linearity under infrared light of both low and high intensity. Therefore, these DTTM-based devices have the attractive properties of high responsivity, extremely low power consumption, and polarization-insensitive detection over a broad bandwidth, suggesting great potential for use in photodetection and on-chip Si photonics in many applications of telecommunication fields.