Optical-Field-Driven Electron Tunneling in Metal-Insulator-Metal Nanojunction.

Abstract

Optical‐field driven electron tunneling in nanojunctions has made demonstrable progress toward the development of ultrafast charge transport devices at subfemtosecond time scales, and have evidenced great potential as a springboard technology for the next generation of on‐chip “lightwave electronics.” Here, the empirical findings on photocurrent the high nonlinearity in metal–insulator–metal (MIM) nanojunctions driven by ultrafast optical pulses in the strong optical‐field regime are reported. In the present MIM device, a 14th power‐law scaling is identified, never achieved before in any known solid‐state device. This work lays important technological foundations for the development of a new generation of ultracompact and ultrafast electronics devices that operate with suboptical‐cycle response times.