Efficient Electrical Detection of Mid-Infrared Graphene Plasmons at Room Temperature

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel room-temperature graphene-based mid-infrared detector that efficiently converts plasmon-induced temperature changes into electrical signals, enabling compact, high-responsivity sensing suitable for on-chip applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new device architecture with nanoribbons and plasmonic resonators that significantly enhances temperature-dependent carrier transport for electrical detection of graphene plasmons.

Findings

Achieved 16 mA/W responsivity at 12.2 μm wavelength.

Demonstrated low noise-equivalent power of 1.3 nW/Hz^{1/2}.

Device operates potentially beyond gigahertz frequencies.

Abstract

Optical excitation and subsequent decay of graphene plasmons can produce a significant increase in charge-carrier temperature. An efficient method to convert this temperature elevation into a measurable electrical signal at room temperature can enable important mid-infrared applications such as thermal sensing and imaging in ubiquitous mobile devices. However, as appealing as this goal might be, it is still unrealized due to the modest thermoelectric coefficient and weak temperature-dependence of carrier transport in graphene. Here, we demonstrate mid-infrared graphene detectors consisting of arrays of plasmonic resonators interconnected by quasi one-dimensional nanoribbons. Localized barriers associated with disorder in the nanoribbons produce a dramatic temperature dependence of carrier transport, thus enabling the electrical detection of plasmon decay in the nearby graphene resonators. We further realize a device with a subwavelength footprint of 5*5 um2 operating at 12.2 um, an external responsivity of 16 mA/W, a low noise-equivalent power of 1.3 nW/Hz1/2 at room temperature, and an operational frequency potentially beyond gigahertz. Importantly, our device is fabricated using large-scale graphene and possesses a simple two-terminal geometry, representing an essential step toward the realization of on-chip graphene mid-infrared detector arrays.