Design and Analytical Evaluation of A High Resistance Sensitivity Bolometer Sensor Based on Plasmonic Metasurface Structure

Bolometer sensors are prominent and excellent choice in technology because they do not need cooling. The trade-off between high sensitivity, fast response time, and strong light absorption is a key important challenge in bolometer sensors. Here, the bolometric effect for a high resistance sensitivity plasmonic sensing of total and profile infusion of radiation is studied for the proposed bolometer sensor based on plasmonic multilayer structure at 26° C. In the present study, by generating strong coupling condition between incident wave and surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), a very narrow absorption spectra with high figure of merit (FoM) is achieved. The analytical model and numerical simulation are fulfilled based on the transfer matrix method (TMM) and 3-D finite-difference time-domain (FDTD), respectively. The narrow absorption spectra that generate by strong coupling with SPPs heats the silver thin film that leads to variation in temperature and supports TE surface mode. This temperature change rectifies the resistance of the metal thin film by the bolometric effect. So, optical characteristics of the proposed metasurface bolometer sensor, including quality factor (Q), sensitivity, and figure of merit (FoM) are calculated that Max sensitivity, FoM, and Q are 17.2 RIU-1, 530 and 434.5, respectively. Finally, we analytically simulate the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) in terms of wavelength and refractive index of analyte (na) that this resistance change can be monitored by an external electric model. The proposed plasmonic multilayer configuration is a very compact footprint structure that achieved high resistance sensitivity and FoM in comparison with any previous reports. This proposed thermal, optical, and electric plasmonic metasurface bolometer sensor can be used in different applications such as biophysics, biology, and environmental science.

Comparative analysis of room temperature plasmonic graphene hot electron bolometric photodetectors

We appraise a waveguide-integrated plasmonic graphene photodetector based on the hot carrier photo-bolometric effect, with performance characterized simultaneously by high responsivity, on the scale of hundreds of A/W, and high speed on the scale of 100’s of GHz. Performance evaluation is based on a theory of bolometric effect originating from the band nonparabolicity of graphene. Results compare favorably with the state-of-the-art plasmonic bolometric photodetectors, predicting up to two orders of magnitude increase in a responsivity while keeping speed on the same level, defined by the electron-lattice scattering time in graphene.

Opto-Electronic Refractometric Sensor Based on Surface Plasmon Resonances and the Bolometric Effect

The bolometric effect allows us to electrically monitor spectral characteristics of plasmonic sensors; it provides a lower cost and simpler sample characterization compared with angular and spectral signal retrieval techniques. In our device, a monochromatic light source illuminates a spectrally selective plasmonic nanostructure. This arrangement is formed by a dielectric low-order diffraction grating that combines two materials with a high-contrast in the index of refraction. Light interacts with this structure and reaches a thin metallic layer, that is also exposed to the analyte. The narrow absorption generated by surface plasmon resonances hybridized with low-order grating modes, heats the metal layer where plasmons are excited. The temperature change caused by this absorption modifies the resistance of a metallic layer through the bolometric effect. Therefore, a refractometric change in the analyte varies the electric resistivity under resonant excitation. We monitor the change in resistance by an external electric circuit. This optoelectronic feature must be included in the definition of the sensitivity and figure of merit (FOM) parameters. Besides the competitive value of the FOM (around 400 RIU − 1 , where RIU means refractive index unit), the proposed system is fully based on opto-electronic measurements. The device is modeled, simulated and analyzed considering fabrication and experimental constrains. The proposed refractometer behaves linearly within a range centered around the index of refraction of aqueous media, n ≃ 1.33 , and can be applied to the sensing for research in bio-physics, biology, and environmental sciences.