Chiral photodetector based on GaAsN

Abstract

The detection of light helicity is key to several research and industrial applications from drugs production to optical communications. However, the direct measurement of the light helicity is inherently impossible with conventional photodetectors based on III-V or IV-VI semiconductors, being naturally non-chiral. The prior polarization analysis of the light by a series of often moving optical elements is necessary before light is sent to the detector. A method is here presented to effectively give to the conventional dilute nitride GaAs-based semiconductor epilayer a chiral photoconductivity in paramagnetic-defect-engineered samples. The detection scheme relies on the giant spin-dependent recombination of conduction electrons and the accompanying spin polarization of the engineered defects to control the conduction band population via the electrons' spin polarization. As the conduction electron spin polarization is, in turn, intimately linked to the excitation light polarization, the light polarization state can be determined by a simple conductivity measurement. This effectively gives the GaAsN epilayer a chiral photoconductivity capable of discriminating the handedness of an incident excitation light in addition to its intensity. This approach, removing the need of any optical elements in front of a non-chiral detector, could offer easier integration and miniaturisation. This new chiral photodetector could potentially operate in a spectral range from the visible to the infra-red using (In)(Al)GaAsN alloys or ion-implanted nitrogen-free III-V compounds.

arXiv comment7 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Detection of circular polarization in light scattered from photosynthetic microbes
• Amplification of spin-filtering effect by magnetic field in GaAsN alloys
• Giant spin-dependent photo-conductivity in GaAsN dilute nitride semiconductor
• Room temperature optical manipulation of nuclear spin polarization in GaAsN
• Spin-dependent recombination and hyperfine interaction at the deep defects
• Fabrication of an InGaAs spin filter by implantation of paramagnetic centers
• Electron-nuclear spin dynamics of Ga${}^{2+}$ paramagnetic centers probed by spin dependent recombination: A master equation approach
• Electrical Detection of Light Helicity using a Quantum Dots based Hybrid Device at Zero Magnetic Field
• Electron-nucleus spin correlation conservation of the spin dependent recombination in Ga${}^{2+}$ centers

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Polarization sensitive photodectector based on GaAsN
• Machine learning assisted GaAsN circular polarimeter
• A systematic study of spin-dependent recombination in GaAs${}_{1-x}$N${}_x$ as a function of nitrogen content