Abstract
Surface plasmons are usually excited by diffraction-limited optical methods with the use of bulky optical components, which greatly limit the miniaturization and chip-scale high-density integration of plasmonic devices. By integrating a plasmonic nanostructure with a tunnel junction, plasmonic modes in the nanostructure can be directly excited by low-energy tunneling electrons, with the advantages including ultra-small footprint and ultra-fast speed. In this mini-review, the recent progress in the electric excitation of localized and propagating surface plasmons by inelastic electron tunneling is overviewed.
Highlights
Surface plasmons are highly confined electromagnetic modes coherently coupled to collective oscillations of free carriers at metallic interfaces
Tunnel Junctions for Plasmonic Excitation breakthroughs in the low-energy direct excitation of surface plasmons based on an inelastic electron tunneling (IET) effect in tunnel junctions
By analyzing the leakage radiation of a tunnel junction formed between an scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip and a thin gold film in both image and Fourier planes, Wang et al found that up to 99.5% of the detected photons come from leakage radiation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) propagating on the gold film with the remaining photon emission attributed to the radiative decay of a localized plasmonic mode excited between the STM tip and the gold film [36], explicitly demonstrating the possibility of highly efficient coupling of inelastic tunneling to propagating plasmonic modes
Summary
Lufang Liu 1, Yue Xu 1, Jiajie Zhu 1, Pan Wang 1,2*, Limin Tong 1,3 and Alexey V. Reviewed by: Shuiyan Cao, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China Tao Wang, Soochow University, China. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Optics and Photonics, a section of the journal
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