Infrared Absorption Efficiency Enhancement of the CMOS Compatible Thermopile by the Special Subwavelength Hole Arrays

The infrared absorption efficiency (IAE) enhancement of the complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductorCMOS compatible thermopile with special subwavelength hole arrays in an active area was numerically investigated by the finite-difference time-domain method. It was found that the absorption efficiency of that thermopile was enhanced when the subwavelength rectangular-hole array added extra rectangular-columnar or ellipse-columnar structures in the hole array. The simulation results show that the IAEs of the better cases for the three types of rectangular columns and three ellipse columns were increased by 14.4% and 15.2%, respectively. Such special subwavelength hole arrays can be improved by the IAE of the CMOS compatible thermopile.