Deterministic inverse design of Tamm plasmon thermal emitters with multi-resonant control.

Wavelength-selective thermal emitters (WS-EMs) are of interest due to the lack of cost-effective, narrow-band sources in the mid- to long-wave infrared. WS-EMs can be realized via Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) supported by distributed Bragg reflectors on metals. However, the design of multiple resonances is challenging as numerous structural parameters must be optimized simultaneously. Here we use stochastic gradient descent to optimize TPP emitters (TPP-EMs) composed of an aperiodic distributed Bragg reflector deposited on doped cadmium oxide (CdO) film, where layer thicknesses and carrier density are inversely designed. The combination of the aperiodic distributed Bragg reflector with the designable plasma frequency of CdO enables multiple TPP-EM modes to be simultaneously designed with arbitrary spectral control not accessible with metal-based TPPs. Using this approach, we experimentally demonstrated and numerically proposed TPP-EMs exhibiting single or multiple emission bands with designable frequencies, line-widths and amplitudes. This thereby enables lithography-free, wafer-scale WS-EMs that are complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor compatible for applications such as free-space communications and gas sensing. Tamm plasmon thermal emitters can provide low-cost, efficient mid to long infrared emission, but have been limited by a challenging design. Here the authors apply an inverse design protocol to demonstrate tailorable multi-band emission on CdO films.