Compound Hertzian Chain Model for Copper-Carbon Nanocomposites' Absorption Spectrum

The infrared range optical absorption mechanism of Carbon-Copper composite thin layer coated on the Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) buffer layer has been investigated. By consideration of weak interactions between copper nanoparticles in their network, optical absorption is modeled using their coherent dipole behavior induced by the electromagnetic radiation. The copper nanoparticles in the bulk of carbon are assumed as a chain of plasmonic dipoles, which have coupling resonance. Considering nearest neighbor interactions for this metallic nanoparticles, surface plasmon resonance frequency ({\omega}\neg0) and coupled plasmon resonance frequency ({\omega}\neg1) have been computed. The damping rate versus wavelength is derived which leads to the derivation of the optical absorption spectrum in the term of {\omega}\neg0 and {\omega}\neg1. The dependency of the absorption peaks to the particle-size and the particle mean spacing is also investigated. The absorption spectrum is measured for different Cu-C thin films with various Cu particle size and spacing. The experimental results of absorption are compared with the obtained analytical ones.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Investigation of Bias Current and Modulation Frequency Dependences of Detectivity of YBCO TES and the Effects of Coating of Cu-C Composite Absorber Layer

Abstract-Bolometric response and noise characteristics of YBCO superconductor transition edge IR detectors with relatively sharp transition and its resulting detectivity are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The magnitude of response of a fabricated device was obtained for different bias currents and modulation frequencies. Using the measured and calculated bolometric response and noise characteristics, we found and analyzed the device detectivity versus frequency for different bias currents. The detectivity versus chopping frequency of the device did not decrease following the response strongly, due to the decrease of the noise at higher frequencies up to 1 kHz, resulting in maximum detectivity around the modulation frequency of 100 Hz. We also improved the responsivity of the device through the increase of the surface absorption by using a novel infrared absorber, which is made of a copper-carbon composite, coated in a low-temperature process. Within the modulation frequency range studied in this paper, comparison of device detectivity before and after coating is also presented. Index Terms-Detectivity, infrared absorber, transition edge sensor (TES)