Infrared dipole antenna enhanced by surface phonon polaritons.

In this Letter, we propose a gold dipole antenna formed on a SiC substrate to achieve a strong concentration of mid-IR radiation based on a synergistic integration of the IR dipole antenna and the resonance excitation of a surface phonon polariton. Numerical simulation based on the finite-difference time-domain technique shows that the intensity enhancement can be greater than 10(7) times at the mid-IR spectral region. The influence of the geometric parameters (i.e., antenna length, gap dimension, antenna thickness, and antenna width) on the antenna field enhancement is also studied. The strong intensity enhancement can find important applications in highly sensitive mid-IR photodetectors and in molecular detection and identification by surface-enhanced IR absorption spectroscopy techniques.