Speaker
Description
The sensitive element of a typical photon detector must perform several functions. It must absorb photons, transduce the photon energy into some excitation, and collect and possibly amplify those excitations. For example, in a silicon detector the photon is absorbed by the silicon crystal, giving rise to electron-hole pairs (excitations), which then must propagate to some collector and possibly be amplified along the way, for example via avalanche multiplication. All these steps are constrained by the properties of the one material: silicon. It is not possible to independently manipulate the absorption from the transduction, for example. In a nanoscale hybrid, multiple elements made of different materials are assembled into a nanoscale system, that is smaller than the wavelength of the target light, allowing each photon to interact coherently with the entire system. This makes it possible to have different, independently optimized elements responsible for absorption, transduction, and collection/amplification. This allows to achieve, for example, near 100% quantum efficiency within a desired band, with single-photon spectroscopic resolution inside the band. We will present the status of our effort to demonstrate such devices. We have developed theory and simulation for the operation of nanoscale hybrids. Our prototyping work involves carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, and transition metal dichalcogenides. We designed and produced integrated circuit passive and active substrates to support these nanomaterials and have developed integration methods using e-beam lithography as well as DNA-guided self-assembly.
