Surface phonon resonance: A new mechanism for enhancing photonic spin Hall effect and refractive index sensor

Abstract Metal-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) plays an important role in enhancing the photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) and developing sensitive optical sensors. However, the very large negative permittivities of metals limit their applications beyond the near-infrared regime. In this work, we theoretically present a new mechanism to enhance the photonic SHE by taking advantage of SiC-supported surface phonon resonance (SPhR) in the mid-infrared regime. The transverse displacement of photonic SHE is very sensitive to the wavelength of incident light and the thickness of SiC layer. Under the optimal parameter setup, the calculated largest transverse displacement of SiC-based SPhR structure reaches up to 163.8 μm, which is much larger than the condition of SPR. Moreover, a NO2 gas sensor based on the SPhR-enhanced photonic SHE is theoretically proposed with the superior sensing performance. Both the intensity and angle sensitivity of this sensor can be effectively manipulated by varying the damping rate of SiC. The results may provide a promising paradigm to enhance the photonic SHE in the mid-infrared region and open up new opportunity of highly sensitive refractive index sensors.