High-efficiency ultrafast optical-to-electrical converters based on InAs nanowire-plasmonic arrays.

There has been a growing interest in developing high-efficiency ultrafast optical-to-electrical converters for advanced imaging and sensing applications. Here, we propose a three-dimensional (3D) plasmonic platform based on InAs nanowire arrays with self-assembled gold gratings, which converts a telecom-wavelength (1550 nm) optical beam to sub-picosecond current pulses with quantum efficiency up to 18.3%, while operating in photovoltaic mode, i.e., at zero bias. Using a comprehensive 3D photoresponse model, we reveal that the incident photons form tightly confined fields near the gratings at nanowire tips, and thus a majority of the photogenerated carriers are efficiently routed to the metal within a few tens of nanometers distance, resulting in ultrafast current pulses. In addition, we show that the amplitude of current pulses is robust to the nanowire surface quality and can be effectively tuned by varying the doping levels in nanowires. This work paves a way to realizing a low-power, highly compact, and low-cost device scheme for ultrafast pulse generation.