Optimized photonic crystal design for quantum well infrared photodetectors

The performance of quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIP) can be significantly enhanced combining it with a photonic crystal slab (PCS) resonator. In such a system the chosen PCS mode is designed to coincide with the absorption maximum of the photodetector by adjusting the lattice parameters. However there is a multitude of parameter sets that exhibit the same resonance frequency of the chosen PCS mode. We have investigated how the choice of the PC design can be exploited for a further enhancement of QWIPs. Several sets of lattice parameters that exhibit the chosen PCS mode at the same resonance frequency have been obtained and the finite difference time domain method was used to simulate the absorption spectra of the different PCS. A photonic crystal slab quantum well infrared photodetector with three different photonic crystal lattice designs that exhibit the same resonance frequency of the chosen PCS mode were designed, fabricated and measured. This work shows that the quality factor of a PCS-QWIP and therefore the absorption enhancement can be increased by an optimized PCS design. The improvement is a combined effect of a changed lattice constant, PC normalized radius and normalized slab thickness. An enhancement of the measured photocurrent of more than a factor of two was measured.