Butterfly Wing Inspired High Performance Infrared Detection with Spectral Selectivity

This work explores an alternative infrared (IR) detection mechanism that is based on the desorption of vapor molecules from the Morpho butterfly nanostructures under the stimulation of incoming IR photons, and demonstrates the use of such stimulated desorption for both broadband and wavelength selective IR detection. Compared to the structural deformation-based IR detection using the Morpho nanostructures, this detection mechanism enables more than an order of magnitude of improvement in both the response of relative reflectance and also the signal-to-noise ratio at the maximum heat-sink-free response speed. The stimulated desorption also provides the opportunity to achieve the wavelength selective IR detection due to the wavelength selective IR absorption of the adsorbed molecules. With the demonstrated high performance in both broadband and wavelength selective IR detection, this detection approach can potentially enable other high performance sensing systems, including chemical vapor, biological, energy, and environmental sensing systems.