Optically and electrically driven nanoantennas

• Monika Fleischer,
• Dai Zhang and
• Alfred J. Meixner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2020, 11, 1542–1545, doi:10.3762/bjnano.11.136

• spectroscopy (SERS); tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS); tunnel junction; Editorial Optical antennas + serve to confine the energy of photons transported by a light wave to a tiny volume much smaller than the wavelength; or reversely, to convert the energy of an evanescent field that oscillates at optical

• frequencies to a traveling electromagnetic wave that can be observed in the far field. Optical antennas are key elements in nano-optics, bridging the gap between the dimension of an optical wavelength (several hundreds of nanometers) and the size of elementary quantum emitters such as single atoms, molecules

• low-background medical imaging or nanolasers [33]. Electrically driven optical antennas emit light when a bias voltage is applied to the contacted antenna arms that are forming a tunnel junction. Inelastic electron tunneling through the gap excites gap–plasmon oscillations leading to the emission of

Directional light beams by design from electrically driven elliptical slit antennas

• Shuiyan Cao,
• Eric Le Moal,
• Quanbo Jiang,
• Aurélien Drezet,
• Serge Huant,
• Jean-Paul Hugonin,
• Gérald Dujardin and
• Elizabeth Boer-Duchemin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2361–2371, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.221

• , miniaturized electrical light sources are needed for chip-to-chip communication and optical interactions with the surrounding environment (e.g., for remote control, external communication or sensing applications). A number of electrically driven emitting optical antennas have been described in the recent

• the axis of which is orthogonal to the surface plane. Thus, for all applications where light is emitted from electrically driven optical antennas and specific directions of emission are desired, a different antenna design has to be found [39]. Recently, we have demonstrated that the electrical

• with a minor linear contribution (along the major axis) that increases with eccentricity. Future improvements of these optical antennas include the integration of the electrical SPP nanosource in the design of the microstructure (e.g., as an integrated metal-oxide–metal tunnel junction) and the

Dumbbell gold nanoparticle dimer antennas with advanced optical properties

• Janning F. Herrmann and
• Christiane Höppener

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 2188–2197, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.205

• antenna concept to the field of optics has opened up new routes to manipulate light on the nanometer scale [1][2][3][4][5]. For more than a decade, optical antennas have demonstrated a tremendous impact on a broad spectrum of applications [6][7][8][9]. A key function, in particular for sensing and imaging

• applications, is the ability of optical antennas to provide a high signal enhancement ratio and light confinement across the UV–vis–NIR spectral range. The development of new configurations has always come along with the question of fundamental limitations in regard to the obtainable electromagnetic field

• electric field enhancement is observed for red-shifted excitation wavelengths. Fabrication strategies of optical antennas, and in particular gap antennas with an optical response in the visible to NIR regime, are versatile and are often correlated with the final application schemes. Although top-down

Self-assembled quasi-hexagonal arrays of gold nanoparticles with small gaps for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy

• Emre Gürdal,
• Simon Dickreuter,
• Fatima Noureddine,
• Pascal Bieschke,
• Dieter P. Kern and
• Monika Fleischer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1977–1985, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.188

• remarkable optical properties make them attractive for applications in biosensing, biomedical science and as optical antennas [6][7][8]. In particular, metal nanoparticles can be employed to strongly enhance the signal intensity in chemically specific Raman sensing [9]. This technique is known as surface

Electromigrated electrical optical antennas for transducing electrons and photons at the nanoscale

• Arindam Dasgupta,
• Mickaël Buret,
• Nicolas Cazier,
• Marie-Maxime Mennemanteuil,
• Reinaldo Chacon,
• Kamal Hammani,
• Jean-Claude Weeber,
• Juan Arocas,
• Laurent Markey,
• Gérard Colas des Francs,
• Alexander Uskov,
• Igor Smetanin and
• Alexandre Bouhelier

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1964–1976, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.187

• waveguiding structures. Conclusion: Electromigrated in-plane tunneling optical antennas feature interesting properties with their unique functionality enabling interfacing electrons and photons at the atomic scale and with the same device. This technology may open new routes for device-to-device communication

• and for interconnecting an electronic control layer to a photonic architecture. Keywords: electromigration; Fowler–Nordheim; hot-electron emission; inelastic electron tunneling; optical antennas; transition voltage; tunnel junction; Introduction The constant evolution of information technologies

• of the chip itself (millimeters). A new paradigm is thus required to develop miniature antennas enabling future WNoC to operate with sub-micrometer transmitting units [7]. In this context, optical antennas are offering an interesting technological route to meet this integration requirement. Optical

Cathodoluminescence as a probe of the optical properties of resonant apertures in a metallic film

• Kalpana Singh,
• Evgeniy Panchenko,
• Babak Nasr,
• Amelia Liu,
• Lukas Wesemann,
• Timothy J. Davis and
• Ann Roberts

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1491–1500, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.140

• the sample. Nevertheless, progress has been made into the use of scanning probe methods for analysing modes of optical antennas [37]. Electron microscopy systems can also be used to probe various modes of optical nanostructures. Electrons in motion are accompanied by an electric field that varies in

New 2D graphene hybrid composites as an effective base element of optical nanodevices

• Olga E. Glukhova,
• Igor S. Nefedov,
• Alexander S. Shalin and
• Мichael М. Slepchenkov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 1321–1327, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.125

• nanocomposite film as a working part of optical antennas or polarizers. According to Figure 7 for all wavelengths the maximum absorption is observed for a p-wave at incidence angles of 85–87° for the irradiation in the YZ-plane, and at angles of 85–90° for the irradiation in the XZ-plane. The absorption reaches

High-contrast and reversible scattering switching via hybrid metal-dielectric metasurfaces

• Jonathan Ward,
• Khosro Zangeneh Kamali,
• Lei Xu,
• Guoquan Zhang,
• Andrey E. Miroshnichenko and
• Mohsen Rahmani

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2018, 9, 460–467, doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.44

• ; Introduction Metasurfaces are thin and flat surfaces that are created using subwavelength optical antennas with various optical properties patterned at interfaces [1][2], enabling control over the polarization, phase, amplitude, and dispersion of light. Metasurfaces are growing in popularity as their optical

Effect of Anderson localization on light emission from gold nanoparticle aggregates

• Mohamed H. Abdellatif,
• Marco Salerno,
• Gaser N. Abdelrasoul,
• Ioannis Liakos,
• Alice Scarpellini,
• Sergio Marras and
• Alberto Diaspro

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2016, 7, 2013–2022, doi:10.3762/bjnano.7.192

• , respectively. The photon localization phenomena have been used intensively in optical antennas [9]. The understanding of the behavior of optical confinement would help the growing areas of photodetection [10], light emission [11], sensing [12] and spectroscopy [1]. Another crucial property of metals is the

Combination of surface- and interference-enhanced Raman scattering by CuS nanocrystals on nanopatterned Au structures

• Alexander G. Milekhin,
• Nikolay A. Yeryukov,
• Larisa L. Sveshnikova,
• Tatyana A. Duda,
• Ekaterina E. Rodyakina,
• Victor A. Gridchin,
• Evgeniya S. Sheremet and
• Dietrich R. T. Zahn

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 749–754, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.77

• field. The constructive interference in oxide layers was successfully used for achieving the maximum field enhancement for optical antennas [25], for realising the effect of co-enhanced IERS and SERS by organic molecules [26] and graphene [27], as well as for designing a chip for single molecular

Mapping of plasmonic resonances in nanotriangles

• Simon Dickreuter,
• Julia Gleixner,
• Andreas Kolloch,
• Johannes Boneberg,
• Elke Scheer and
• Paul Leiderer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 588–602, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.66

• structures, e.g., for the design of sophisticated optical antennas, will be. The method described here should also be applicable for higher order polarizations, like azimuthally or radially polarized laser beams, as they have been used to excite plasmon modes in triangular nanostructures in a confocal

Nanophotonics, nano-optics and nanospectroscopy

• Alfred J. Meixner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 499–500, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.53

• resonances of silver and gold nanoparticles. The concept of plasmon resonance has led to broad applications, such as optical antennas made from noble metals, which have been used to locally focus light into volumes with dimensions far below the diffraction limit and to enhance the emission of locally excited