Letter abstract
Nature Photonics 2, 226 - 229 (2008)
Published online: 16 March 2008 | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.30
Subject Categories: Nanophotonics | Optoelectronic devices and components
Nanometre-scale germanium photodetector enhanced by a near-infrared dipole antenna
Liang Tang1, Sukru Ekin Kocabas1, Salman Latif1, Ali K. Okyay2, Dany-Sebastien Ly-Gagnon1, Krishna C. Saraswat2 & David A. B. Miller1
Abstract
A critical challenge for the convergence of optics and electronics is that the micrometre scale of optics is significantly larger than the nanometre scale of modern electronic devices. In the conversion from photons to electrons by photodetectors, this size incompatibility often leads to substantial penalties in power dissipation, area, latency and noise1, 2, 3, 4. A photodetector can be made smaller by using a subwavelength active region; however, this can result in very low responsivity because of the diffraction limit of the light. Here we exploit the idea of a half-wave Hertz dipole antenna (length 
380 nm) from radio waves, but at near-infrared wavelengths (length 1.3 
m), to concentrate radiation into a nanometre-scale germanium photodetector. This gives a polarization contrast of a factor of 20 in the resulting photocurrent in the subwavelength germanium element, which has an active volume of 0.00072 m3, a size that is two orders of magnitude smaller than previously demonstrated detectors at such wavelengths.
- Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
- Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
Correspondence to: Liang Tang1 e-mail: luke_tang@stanford.edu
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