Design of plasmonic photodetector with high absorptance and nano-scale active regions

We propose a novel plasmonic photodetector with high responsivity, utilizing nano-scale active regions. This design can be applied to diverse materials (group III-V or IV materials) and different operation wavelengths covering the O-U bands. The periodic structure utilizing Surface Plasmon Polariton Bloch Waves (SPP-BWs) has low optical power loss. FDTD simulation shows an absorptance of 74.4% which means a responsivity of about 0.74 A/W at 1550 nm. The low capacitance brings low noise, reduced power consumption, and a high electrical bandwidth which is estimated to be 140 GHz. Among the plasmonic PDs with inherent high speeds but low responsivities, our design makes the obvious progress on improving the absorptance.