Group-IV midinfrared plasmonics

The use of heavily doped semiconductors to achieve plasma frequencies in the mid-IR has been recently proposed as a promising way to obtain high-quality and tunable plasmonic materials. We introduce a plasmonic platform based on epitaxial n-type Ge grown on standard Si wafers by means of low-energy plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Due to the large carrier concentration achieved with P dopants and to the compatibility with the existing CMOS technology, SiGe plasmonics hold promises for mid-IR applications in optoelectronics, IR detection, sensing, and light harvesting. As a representative example, we show simulations of mid-IR plasmonic waveguides based on the experimentally retrieved dielectric constants of the grown materials. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.