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Zero-power infrared digitizers based on plasmonically enhanced micromechanical photoswitches

Abstract

State-of-the-art sensors use active electronics to detect and discriminate light1,2,3, sound4,5, vibration6,7 and other signals8,9. They consume power constantly, even when there is no relevant data to be detected, which limits their lifetime and results in high costs of deployment and maintenance for unattended sensor networks. Here we propose a device concept that fundamentally breaks this paradigm—the sensors remain dormant with near-zero power consumption until awakened by a specific physical signature associated with an event of interest. In particular, we demonstrate infrared digitizing sensors that consist of plasmonically enhanced micromechanical photoswitches (PMPs) that selectively harvest the impinging electromagnetic energy in design-defined spectral bands of interest, and use it to create mechanically a conducting channel between two electrical contacts, without the need for any additional power source. Our zero-power digitizing sensor prototypes produce a digitized output bit (that is, a large and sharp off-to-on state transition with an on/off conductance ratio >1012 and subthreshold slope >9 dec nW–1) when exposed to infrared radiation in a specific narrow spectral band (900 nm bandwidth in the mid-infrared) with the intensity above a power threshold of only 500 nW, which is not achievable with any existing photoswitch technologies.

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Figure 1: Structure of the PMP and working principle.
Figure 2: Absorption properties of the PMPs.
Figure 3: Device response to infrared radiation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank R. Olsson, R. Bogoslovov and Y. Hui for valuable discussions and the staff of the George J. Kostas Nanoscale Technology and Manufacturing Research Center at Northeastern University and the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University where the devices were fabricated. This work was supported by DARPA NZERO Program contract no. HR0011-15-2-0048 and partially supported by NSF CAREER award no. ECCS-1350114.

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Contributions

M.R. conceived the idea and initiated the research; M.R. and Z.Q. designed the device and the experiments; S.K. designed and characterized the infrared absorber; V.R. designed and implemented the experimental set-up; Z.Q. and S.K. fabricated the devices; Z.Q. and V.R. performed the experiments and analysed the data; N.E.M., V.R. and C.C. contributed to the device design; M.R. coordinated and supervised the research. M.R., Z.Q., N.E.M., S.K. and V.R. contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matteo Rinaldi.

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A patent application has been filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), application no. PCT/US/16/48083.

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Qian, Z., Kang, S., Rajaram, V. et al. Zero-power infrared digitizers based on plasmonically enhanced micromechanical photoswitches. Nature Nanotech 12, 969–973 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2017.147

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