Zero infrared reflectance anomaly in doped silicon lamellar gratings. I. From antireflection to total absorption

Zero-reflectance phenomenon for a binary lamellar grating on n-Si substrate irradiated by normally incident TE polarized plane electromagnetic wave of wavelength 10.6 μm is studied. The treatment is performed in the strong diffraction regime, where the structural dimensions and the wavelength are of the same order of magnitude, using data on the IR dielectric function of bulk doped silicon and a version of rigorous coupled-wave analysis. The evolution of normal reflectance zeros with increasing electron concentration from dielecric to metallic-like n-Si is traced. It is shown that the groove height undergoes sharp increase and the period shrinks when plasma wavelength becomes equal to the radiation wavelength. This marks the transition from the antireflection to the total absorption regime where most of incident power is absorbed in the grating region. The cavity-resonance origin of total absorption and satellite peaks in the spectral response are discussed.