Harnessing IR absorption with polaritonic PCs

Abstract

We discuss how to harness absorption in polaritonic PCs, in the frequency regime of the phonon-polariton gap of the constituent material. In this regime, the bulk polaritonic material is capable of only very low absorption due to the very high reflection at the air-polaritonic material interface. In particular, we consider one-dimensional (1D) SiC-air photonic crystal (PC) structures and analyze the possibility of absorption enhancement by employing the transfer matrix method (TMM). We demonstrate that by carefully exploiting the influence of the energy velocity at the interface, we are able to achieve near-perfect absorption. We believe that our polaritonic PC paradigm will inspire the engineering of high performing absorbers based on non-metallic materials in the mid-IR frequency regime, which is of crucial importance for sensing applications.

Ganga Chinna Rao Devarapu

Researcher in Nanophotonics

My research interests include silicon photonics, photonic crystals and biomedical devices.