Current crowding issues on nanoscale planar organic transistors for spintronic applications

The predominance of interface resistance makes current crowding ubiquitous in short channel organic electronics devices but its impact on spin transport has never been considered. We investigate electrochemically doped nanoscale PBTTT short channel devices and observe the smallest reported values of crowding lengths, found for sub-100 nm electrodes separation. These observed values are nevertheless exceeding the spin diffusion lengths reported in the literature. We discuss here how current crowding can be taken into account in the framework of the Fert–Jaffrès model of spin current propagation in heterostructures, and predict that the anticipated resulting values of magnetoresistance can be significantly reduced. Current crowding therefore impacts spin transport applications and interpretation of the results on spin valve devices

Compact Antenna for Efficient and Unidirectional Launching and Decoupling of Surface Plasmons

Controlling the launching efficiencies and the directionality of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and their decoupling to freely propagating light is a major goal for the development of plasmonic devices and systems. Here, we report on the design and experimental observation of a highly efficient unidirectional surface plasmon launcher composed of eleven subwavelength grooves, each with a distinct depth and width. Our observations show that, under normal illumination by a focused Gaussian beam, unidirectional SPP launching with an efficiency of at least 52% is achieved experimentally with a compact device of total length smaller than 8 μm. Reciprocally, we report that the same device can efficiently convert SPPs into a highly directive light beam emanating perpendicularly to the sample

Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering on a Single Nanometric Aperture

1 - ArticleArrays of nanoapertures have been demonstrated to realize efficient, robust, and reproducible substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering SERS spectroscopy. However, little attention has been devoted to single nanoapertures, although a thorough understanding of the SERS phenomenon in a single aperture is essential for the rationale optimization of nanoaperture arrays SERS. In this study, single nanoapertures milled in optically thick gold films are quantitatively evaluated for the first time to determine the SERS enhancement factors using para-mercaptoaniline as nonresonant analyte. We determine a peak enhancement factor of 2 x 10(5) for a single 100 nm diameter aperture. Although this is a moderate enhancement factor, we believe that nanoapertures deserve special attention to highlight the physical and chemical phenomena leading to SERS enhancement and better understand the design of nanoaperture arrays for SERS substrates. The experimental data are supported by numerical simulations and argue for a careful consideration of aperture diameter, incident polarization, analyte deposition method, and nature of the gold adhesion layer while designing aperture-based SERS substrates and evaluating SERS enhancement factors