Spontaneous Hot-Electron Light Emission from Electron-Fed Optical Antennas

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• 作者：Mickael Buret ; Alexander V. Uskov ; Jean Dellinger ; Nicolas Cazier ; Marie-Maxime Mennemanteuil ; Johann Berthelot ; Igor V. Smetanin ; Igor E. Protsenko ; G茅rard Colas-des-Francs ; Alexandre Bouhelier
• 刊名：Nano Letters
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：September 9, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：15
• 期：9
• 页码：5811-5818
• 全文大小：476K
• ISSN：1530-6992

文摘

Nanoscale electronics and photonics are among the most promising research areas providing functional nanocomponents 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.