Mid-infrared plasmonic absorption from heavily doped Ge thin films

Exploiting plasmonics for mid-IR sensing purposes has become an increasing area of research. The reason is that many molecules present molecular vibrational resonances, which provide spectral fingerprints in the near- and mid-IR region [1, 2]. Of particular interest is the gas detection, diagnostic and medical care. To this day, strong plasmon resonances in the visible and near-IR spectral range have been identified in nanostructured metals such as silver, aluminum and gold [3]. In principle, heavily doped semiconducting materials like Si or Ge could be an interesting alternative to replace metals due to their compatibility with CMOS technology. Indeed, the possibility to control the plasmon resonance frequency in semiconductors via the carrier density opens new route for near- and mid-IR detectors.
In this work, we report on the strong mid-IR plasmon absorption from heavily P-doped Ge thin films obtained by non-equilibrium thermal processing. Ultra-doped Ge layers were fabricated by ion implantation of P ions followed by rear-side flash lamp annealing in the millisecond range. This approach, in contrast to conventional annealing procedures, leads to full recrystallization of Ge films and high P activation irrespective of pre-treatment. In this way, single crystalline Ge thin films free of defects with carrier concentration much above 1×1020 cm-3 and carrier mobility above 260 cm2/(V·s) were obtained. The mid-IR plasmon spectral response at room temperature from those samples was characterized by means of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. It is proven that the position of the signal from the plasmon resonance frequency can be tuned as a function of the P concentration.
Keywords: plasmonics, heavily doped n-type Ge, flash-lamp annealing.
[1] A. G. Brolo, Nat. Photonics 6, 709 (2012).
[2] N. Liu, M. Mesch, T. Weiss, M. Hentschel, and H. Giessen, Nano Lett. 10, 2342 (2010).
[3] G. Konstantatos and E. H. Sargent, Nat. Nanotechnology 5, 391 (2010).