Characterisation of a micrometer-scale active plasmonic element by means of complementary computational and experimental methods

• Ciarán Barron,
• Giulia Di Fazio,
• Samuel Kenny,
• Silas O’Toole,
• Robin O’Reilly and
• Dominic Zerulla

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2023, 14, 110–122, doi:10.3762/bjnano.14.12

• distribution is investigated by means of scanning Joule expansion microscopy (SJEM) [32]. The technique provides a method to obtain the relative temperature distribution at the nanoscale starting from the measurement of induced thermal expansion, which can be directly mapped in a standard AFM-based image using

• optical and thermal data are used to inform detailed finite element method simulations for verification and to predict system responses allowing for enhanced design choices to maximise modulation depth and localisation. Keywords: active plasmonics; atomic force microscope; scanning Joule expansion

• microscopy (SJEM); surface plasmon polariton; Introduction Active plasmonics has been gaining attention from the research community for its role in the development of photonic devices [1][2], low-loss waveguides [3], and imaging systems [4]. It is an emerging subfield of plasmonics, which focuses on