A “Janus” double sided mid-IR photodetector based on a MIM architecture

Mario Malerba (1) , Mathieu Jeannin (1) , Stefano Pirotta (1) , Lianhe Li (2) , Alexander Giles Davies (2) , Edmund Linfield (2) , Adel Bousseksou (1) , Jean-Michel Manceau (1) , Raffaele Colombelli (1)

1 C2N - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies
2 School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering [Leeds]

We present a mid-IR (λ ∼ 8.3 μm) quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) fabricated on a mid-IR transparent substrate, allowing photodetection with illumination from either the front surface or through the substrate. The device is based on a 400 nm-thick GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor QWIP heterostructure enclosed in a nanostructured metal–insulator–metal cavity and hosted on a mid-IR transparent ZnSe substrate. Metallic stripes are symmetrically patterned by e-beam lithography on both sides of the active region. The detector spectral coverage spans from λ ∼ 7.15 to λ ∼ 8.7 μm by changing the stripe width L—from L = 1.0 to L = 1.3 μm—thus frequency-tuning the optical cavity mode. Both micro-FTIR passive optical characterizations and photocurrent measurements of the two-port system are carried out. They reveal a similar spectral response for the two detector ports with an experimentally measured TBLIP of ∼200 K.

Domaines: Physique [physics]; Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Physique Générale [physics.gen-ph]

Mario Malerba, Mathieu Jeannin, Stefano Pirotta, Lianhe Li, Alexander Giles Davies, et al.. A “Janus” double sided mid-IR photodetector based on a MIM architecture. Appl.Phys.Lett., 2021, 119 (18), pp.181102. ⟨10.1063/5.0065591⟩. ⟨hal-03323026⟩