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Hot-electron nanoscopy using adiabatic compression of surface plasmons

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 845–852 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons are a central concept in nanoplasmonics and have been exploited to develop ultrasensitive chemical detection platforms, as well as imaging and spectroscopic techniques at the nanoscale. Surface plasmons can decay to form highly energetic (or hot) electrons in a process that is usually thought to be parasitic for applications, because it limits the lifetime and propagation length of surface plasmons and therefore has an adverse influence on the functionality of nanoplasmonic devices. Recently, however, it has been shown that hot electrons produced by surface plasmon decay can be harnessed to produce useful work in photodetection, catalysis and solar energy conversion. Nevertheless, the surface-plasmon-to-hot-electron conversion efficiency has been below 1% in all cases. Here we show that adiabatic focusing of surface plasmons on a Schottky diode-terminated tapered tip of nanoscale dimensions allows for a plasmon-to-hot-electron conversion efficiency of ∼30%. We further demonstrate that, with such high efficiency, hot electrons can be used for a new nanoscopy technique based on an atomic force microscopy set-up. We show that this hot-electron nanoscopy preserves the chemical sensitivity of the scanned surface and has a spatial resolution below 50 nm, with margins for improvement.

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Figure 1: Schematic of experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Plasmonic structure and scheme of SPP generation.
Figure 3: Photoelectric AFM current through the n-type GaAs–Au tip junction.
Figure 4: I–V characteristics of the nanosized Schottky junction.
Figure 5: Three-dimensional hot-electron maps of specific custom-realized locally patterned samples.
Figure 6: SPP-to-hot-electron conversion efficiency and responsivity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Lorenzoni for providing the patterned sample for hot-electron nanoimaging. The authors also thank S. Lupi for infrared absorption measurements, B. S. Ooi for helping with 980 nm measurements, and A. Fratalocchi for several useful discussions. E.D.F. acknowledges support from European Projects Nanoantenna (FP7 No. 241818, FOCUS FP7 No. 270483). M.I.S. acknowledges support from the Max Planck Society and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Cluster of Excellence: Munich Center for Advanced Photonics (http://www.munich-photonics.de) and the Chemical Sciences, Biosciences and Geosciences Division (grant no. DE-FG02-01ER15213) of the Materials Sciences and Engineering Division of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, US Department of Energy (grant no. DE-FG02-11ER46789).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanostructures, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, Genova, 16163, Italy

    A. Giugni, A. Toma, M. Malerba, A. Alabastri & R. Proietti Zaccaria

  2. PSE and BESE Divisions, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    A. Giugni, B. Torre, M. Francardi & E. Di Fabrizio

  3. Nanophysics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, Genova, 16163, Italy

    B. Torre

  4. Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, BIONEM, Bio-Nanotechnology and Engineering for Medicine, University of Magna Graecia Viale Europa, Germaneto, Catanzaro, 88100, Italy

    M. Francardi & E. Di Fabrizio

  5. Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, Garching, D-85748, Germany

    M. I. Stockman

  6. Department of Physics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, 30340, Georgia, USA

    M. I. Stockman

  7. Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, München, D-80539, Germany

    M. I. Stockman

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  1. A. Giugni
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Contributions

M.I.S. and E.D.F. conceived the adiabatic plasmonic hot-electron nanoscopy. A.G., A.T., B.T. and E.D.F designed the experiments and A.G., A.T. and B.T. performed the experiments and analysed the data. R.P.Z. and A.A. performed the numerical simulations. M.F. and M.M. realized the nanostructured devices. E.D.F. supervised the whole project. All authors contributed to the discussion of the results and to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to E. Di Fabrizio.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Giugni, A., Torre, B., Toma, A. et al. Hot-electron nanoscopy using adiabatic compression of surface plasmons. Nature Nanotech 8, 845–852 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.207

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