Metamaterial-Enhanced Quantum Infrared Detectors

Abstract

Recent advances on infrared detectors that operate in metamaterial arrays of sub-wavelength metallic resonators are reported. The metallic metamaterial resonators have a quantitative impact on the high temperature detector performance, owe to the combination of a strong local field enhancement and an antenna effect. The latter allows collecting photons from an area that is much larger than the electrical area of the device, resulting in a strong reduction of the thermally excited detector dark current.