  Light properties in the mid-infrared can be controlled at a deep
subwavelength scale using hyperbolic phonons-polaritons (HPPs) of hexagonal
boron nitride (h-BN). While propagating as waveguided modes HPPs can
concentrate the electric field in a chosen nano-volume. Such a behavior is at
the heart of many applications including subdiffraction imaging and sensing.
Here, we employ HPPs in heterostructures of h-BN and graphene as new
nano-optoelectronic platform by uniting the benefits of efficient hot-carrier
photoconversion in graphene and the hyperbolic nature of h-BN. We demonstrate
electrical detection of HPPs by guiding them towards a graphene pn-junction. We
shine a laser beam onto a gap in metal gates underneath the heterostructure,
where the light is converted into HPPs. The HPPs then propagate as confined
rays heating up the graphene leading to a strong photocurrent. This concept is
exploited to boost the external responsivity of mid-infrared photodetectors,
overcoming the limitation of graphene pn-junction detectors due to their small
active area and weak absorption. Moreover this type of detector exhibits
tunable frequency selectivity due to the HPPs, which combined with its high
responsivity paves the way for efficient high-resolution mid-infrared imaging.
