3 research outputs found
Spontaneous hot-electron light emission from electron-fed optical antennas
Nanoscale electronics and photonics are among the most promising research
areas providing functional nano-components for data transfer and signal
processing. By adopting metal-based optical antennas as a disruptive
technological vehicle, we demonstrate that these two device-generating
technologies can be interfaced to create an electronically-driven self-emitting
unit. This nanoscale plasmonic transmitter operates by injecting electrons in a
contacted tunneling antenna feedgap. Under certain operating conditions, we
show that the antenna enters a highly nonlinear regime in which the energy of
the emitted photons exceeds the quantum limit imposed by the applied bias. We
propose a model based upon the spontaneous emission of hot electrons that
correctly reproduces the experimental findings. The electron-fed optical
antennas described here are critical devices for interfacing electrons and
photons, enabling thus the development of optical transceivers for on-chip
wireless broadcasting of information at the nanoscale
Biased Nanoscale Contact as Active Element for Electrically Driven Plasmonic Nanoantenna
Electrically
driven optical antennas can serve as compact sources
of electromagnetic radiation operating at optical frequencies. In
the most widely explored configurations, the radiation is generated
by electrons tunneling between metallic parts of the structure when
a bias voltage is applied across the tunneling gap. Rather than relying
on an inherently inefficient inelastic light emission in the gap,
we suggest to use a ballistic nanoconstriction as the feed element
of an optical antenna supporting plasmonic modes. We discuss the underlying
mechanisms responsible for the optical emission and show that, with
such a nanoscale contact, one can reach quantum efficiency orders
of magnitude larger than with standard light-emitting tunneling structures