Plasmonic Nanoantennas for Broad-Band Enhancement of Two-Photon Emission from Semiconductors

• Published in: Nano letters Vol. 10; no. 5; pp. 1848 - 1852
• Main Authors: Nevet, Amir, Berkovitch, Nikolai, Hayat, Alex, Ginzburg, Pavel, Ginzach, Shai, Sorias, Ofir, Orenstein, Meir
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Chemical Society 12.05.2010
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Collective excitations (including excitons, polarons, plasmons and other charge-density excitations); Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties; Electronic structure and electrical properties of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and low-dimensional structures; Electronics; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Lighting - instrumentation; Molecular electronics, nanoelectronics; Nanostructures - chemistry; Nanostructures - ultrastructure; Nanotechnology - instrumentation; Photons; Physics; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Semiconductors; Surface and interface electron states; Surface Plasmon Resonance - instrumentation; Transducers; two-photon emission; nanoparticles; Semiconductors; plasmonic enhancement; Aluminium arsenides; Spontaneous emission; Charge carriers; Semiconductor materials; Quality factor; Aluminium Gallium Arsenides Mixed; Plasmons; Arrays; Nanoelectronics; Nanoantenna
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/nl1005806

We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically a broad-band enhancement of the spontaneous two-photon emission from AlGaAs at room temperature by plasmonic nanoantenna arrays fabricated on the semiconductor surface. Plasmonic structures with inherently low quality factors but very small effective volumes are shown to be optimal. A 20-fold enhancement was achieved for the entire antenna array, corresponding to an enhancement of nearly 3 orders of magnitude for charge carriers emitting at the near field of a plasmonic antenna.