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Antenna-coupled photon emission from hexagonal boron nitride tunnel junctions

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 1058–1063 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The ultrafast conversion of electrical signals to optical signals at the nanoscale is of fundamental interest for data processing, telecommunication and optical interconnects. However, the modulation bandwidths of semiconductor light-emitting diodes are limited by the spontaneous recombination rate of electron–hole pairs, and the footprint of electrically driven ultrafast lasers is too large for practical on-chip integration. A metal–insulator–metal tunnel junction approaches the ultimate size limit of electronic devices and its operating speed is fundamentally limited only by the tunnelling time. Here, we study the conversion of electrons (localized in vertical gold–hexagonal boron nitride–gold tunnel junctions) to free-space photons, mediated by resonant slot antennas. Optical antennas efficiently bridge the size mismatch between nanoscale volumes and far-field radiation and strongly enhance the electron–photon conversion efficiency. We achieve polarized, directional and resonantly enhanced light emission from inelastic electron tunnelling and establish a novel platform for studying the interaction of electrons with strongly localized electromagnetic fields.

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Figure 1: Expanded illustration of sample configuration.
Figure 2: Structural and optical properties of tunnel devices.
Figure 3: Light emission from antenna-coupled tunnelling devices.
Figure 4: Dipolar characteristics of the emitted light.
Figure 5: Finite-element calculations and device emission spectrum.
Figure 6: Frequency modulation of light emission.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Z.J. Lapin for sample fabrication by focused ion beam milling, K. Luszcz for support regarding the frequency modulation experiments, and M. Kasperczyk and D.W. Pohl for helpful discussions. Funding by the NCCR-QSIT programme (grant no. 51NF40-160591) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 200021_149433) is appreciated. The authors also acknowledge the use of facilities at the FIRST Center for Micro- and Nanotechnology as well as the Scientific Center for Optical and Electron Microscopy (ScopeM) at ETH Zürich. K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the MEXT, Japan. T.T. acknowledges support from a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (grant no. 262480621) and on Innovative Areas ‘Nano Informatics’ (grant no. 25106006) from JSPS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photonics Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Zürich, 8093, Switzerland

    M. Parzefall, P. Bharadwaj, A. Jain & L. Novotny

  2. National Institute for Material Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan

    T. Taniguchi & K. Watanabe

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  1. M. Parzefall
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Contributions

L.N., P.B. and M.P. conceived the research. M.P. fabricated the samples and carried out the numerical simulations. M.P. and P.B. measured the samples. A.J. developed the transfer technique. K.W. and T.T. synthesized the h-BN crystals. M.P., P.B. and L.N. discussed the results and co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to L. Novotny.

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Parzefall, M., Bharadwaj, P., Jain, A. et al. Antenna-coupled photon emission from hexagonal boron nitride tunnel junctions. Nature Nanotech 10, 1058–1063 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.203

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