Plasmonic Photodetectors, Photovoltaics, and Hot-Electron Devices

The ability of plasmonic structures to manipulate light well below the diffraction limit has enabled the miniaturization of a range of chipscale optoelectronic devices. Of the many emerging applications, the development of plasmon-enhanced photodetection schemes has witnessed particularly impressive progress. For such devices, the scaling behavior is very favorable, and some unavoidable, detrimental optical losses in the metals are often compensated by a substantially improved performance in terms of the electrical power consumption, speed of operation, and the possibility to achieve new functionalities with engineered metallic nanostructures. Plasmonics has also received tremendous interest in the photovoltaics field. Whereas application of dissipative metals in solar cells is challenging based on the current emphasis on very high efficiency cells, new opportunities are emerging in solar fuel generation and for the harvesting of hot carriers. Such devices can capitalize on the optical losses in metals or be used to increase the spectral bandwidth of operation.