Using a plasmonic lens to control the emission of electrically excited light

A local, low-energy, electrical method for the excitation of localized and propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) is attractive for both fundamental and applied research. In particular, such a method produces no excitation background light and may be integrated with nanoelectronics. Here we report on the electrical excitation of SPPs through the inelastic tunneling of low-energy electrons from the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to the surface of a two-dimensional plasmonic lens. The plasmonic structure is a series of concentric circular slits etched in a thick gold film on a glass substrate. An out-going circular SPP wave is generated from the tip-sample junction and is scattered into light by the slits. We compare the resulting emission pattern to that observed when exciting SPPs on a thin, unstructured gold film. For optimized parameters, the light emitted from the plasmonic lens is radially polarized. We describe the effects of the slit period and number, and lens diameter on the emission pattern and we diskuss how the light beam of low divergence is formed.

[1]  Min Gu,et al.  Five-dimensional optical recording mediated by surface plasmons in gold nanorods , 2009, Nature.

[2]  Aurélien Drezet,et al.  Cylindrical vector beams of light from an electrically excited plasmonic lens , 2014 .

[3]  Colin J R Sheppard,et al.  Annular pupils, radial polarization, and superresolution. , 2004, Applied optics.

[4]  Lukas Novotny,et al.  Electrical excitation of surface plasmons. , 2011, Physical review letters.

[5]  Q. Zhan.  Trapping metallic Rayleigh particles with radial polarization. , 2004, Optics express.

[6]  Vladimir M Shalaev,et al.  The Case for Plasmonics , 2010, Science.

[7]  H. Ditlbacher,et al.  Spectrally coded optical data storage by metal nanoparticles. , 2000, Optics letters.

[8]  Tao Wang,et al.  Scattering of electrically excited surface plasmon polaritons by gold nanoparticles studied by optical interferometry with a scanning tunneling microscope , 2015 .

[9]  Tao Wang,et al.  Electrically driven surface plasmon nanosources , 2015, Photonics West - Optoelectronic Materials and Devices.

[10]  D. Koller,et al.  Leakage radiation microscopy of surface plasmon polaritons , 2008, 1002.0725.

[11]  Tao Wang,et al.  Temporal coherence of propagating surface plasmons. , 2014, Optics letters.

[12]  R. Rendell,et al.  Role of Local Plasmon Modes in Light Emission from Small-particle Tunnel Junctions , 1978 .

[13]  Yang Zhang,et al.  Excitation of propagating surface plasmons with a scanning tunnelling microscope , 2011, Nanotechnology.

[14]  Anatoly V. Zayats,et al.  Near-field photonics: surface plasmon polaritons and localized surface plasmons , 2003 .

[15]  Elizabeth Boer-Duchemin,et al.  Engineering the emission of light from a scanning tunneling microscope using the plasmonic modes of a nanoparticle , 2016 .

[16]  Tao Wang,et al.  Edge scattering of surface plasmons excited by scanning tunneling microscopy. , 2013, Optics express.

[17]  W. Barnes,et al.  Surface plasmon subwavelength optics , 2003, Nature.

[18]  Tao Wang.  Excitation électrique de plasmons de surface avec un microscope à effet tunnel , 2012 .

[19]  S. Mukherjee,et al.  An electrically excited nanoscale light source with active angular control of the emitted light. , 2013, Nano letters.

[20]  Eric Le Moal,et al.  Local low-energy electrical excitation of localized and propagating surface plasmons with a scanning tunneling microscope , 2014, Photonics Europe.

[21]  J. Christoffers,et al.  Optical and Electrical Excitation of Hybrid Guided Modes in an Organic Nanofiber–Gold Film System , 2015 .