Silicon (Si) photodetectors exhibit limited infrared responsivity, restricting applications in communication, chemical sensing, and biomedical imaging. Although lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) can extend the spectral response of silicon, weak IR absorption and interfacial nonradiative losses have hindered etch-free monolithic integration. Here, we report an inverted-index UCNP-Si metasurface in which low-index NaYF4:Yb/Er nanocylinders are conformally coated with a high-index amorphous silicon layer. A collective-Mie flatband resonance at 976 nm enables near-unity absorption, simultaneously concentrating pump photons within the UCNP domains over a wide numerical aperture (NA ≈ 0.5) and activating near-field-mediated passivation of interfacial loss channels. The combined effects of resonant field enhancement and light-activated loss recovery yield a record 6800-fold increase in long-lived steady-state upconversion. This fully etch-free platform is compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor processing and provides a scalable route toward upconversion-enabled silicon photodetectors and compact light sources.
Zhang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.