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Plasmonic Nanoantenna Arrays as Efficient Etendue Reducers for Optical Detection
journal contribution
posted on 2018-05-16, 00:00 authored by Shaojun Wang, Quynh Le-Van, Thibault Peyronel, Mohammad Ramezani, Niels Van Hoof, Tobias G. Tiecke, Jaime Gómez RivasOptical detectors
require the efficient collection of incident
light onto a photodetector. Refractive or reflective optics are commonly
used to increase the collected power. However, in the absence of losses,
such optics conserve etendue and therefore pose a limit on the field
of view and the active area of the detector. A promising method to
overcome this limitation is to use an intermediate layer of fluorescent
material that omnidirectionally absorbs the incident light and preferentially
emits toward the photodetector. We demonstrate here that plasmonic
nanoantenna phased arrays are a promising platform to improve the
emission efficiency of thin luminescent layers and provide an efficient
method to reduce optical etendue. In particular, we show an almost
constant optical absorption of the luminescent layer on top of the
array with the angle of incidence and a strong beamed emission in
small solid angles in the forward direction. These results pave the
way for novel optical communication detectors incorporating nanofabricated
plasmonic materials as optical etendue reducers.