Coupling of Surface Plasmon Polariton in Al-Doped ZnO with Fabry-Pérot Resonance for Total Light Absorption

Abstract

Al-doped ZnO (AZO) can be used as an electrically tunable plasmonic material in the near infrared range. This paper presents finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations on total light absorption (TLA) resulting from the coupling of a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) with Fabry-Pérot (F-P) resonance in a three-layer structure consisting of an AZO square lattice hole array, a spacer, and a layer of silver. Firstly, we identified that the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) that will couple to the F-P resonance because of an SPP standing wave in the (1,0) direction of the square lattice. Two types of coupling between SPP and F-P resonance are observed in the simulations. In order to achieve TLA, an increase in the refractive index of the spacer material leads to a decrease in the thickness of the spacer. Additionally, it is shown that the replacement of silver by other, more cost-effective metals has no significance influence on the TLA condition. It is observed in the simulations that post-fabrication tunability of the TLA wavelength is possible via the electrical tunability of the AZO. Finally, electric field intensity distributions at specific wavelengths are computed to further prove the coupling of SPP with F-P resonance. This work will contribute to the design principle for future device fabrication for TLA applications.

Keywords

• total light absorption
• Fabry-Pérot resonance
• surface plasmon polariton
• Al-doped ZnO