Antenna-Coupled Nanowire Thermocouples for Infrared Detection

Unbiased, uncooled, and frequency-selective antenna-coupled nanowire thermocouples have been fabricated out of different metal combinations and characterized for infrared detection. The relative Seebeck coefficient of the nanowire thermocouples was measured with a characterization platform, which is colocated on the same chip as the detectors. The area of the hot junction of the nanowire thermocouple is approximately 75 nm × 75 nm. The antenna-coupled thermocouples show polarization dependence with a maximum normalized detectivity (D*) of 1.94 × 10⁵ cm · √Hz/W.