Plasmon-enhanced HgTe colloidal quantum dot infrared photodetectors

Surface plasmon resonances based on metal nanoparticles (MNPs) can intensively enhance the electric field strength and capture light in the near-field region, thus greatly improving the performance of photodetectors. Here, we investigate plasmon-enhanced HgTe colloidal quantum dot (CQD) short-wave infrared (SWIR) photodetectors with Ag NPs embedded. Thanks to Ag NPs’ ability to trap the incident light, the light-to-dark current ratio of our enhanced CQD photodetectors with 10 nm Ag NPs is significantly increased by a factor of 5.7. Accordingly, the specific detectivity and responsivity are also enhanced, achieving about 8.92 × 1010 Jones and above 2 AW−1 under 2 V bias, respectively.