Coulomb blockade plasmonic switch
Date
2017-03-16
Authors
Xiang, Dao
Wu, Jian
Gordon, Reuven
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nano Letters
Abstract
Tunnel resistance can be modulated with bias via the Coulomb blockade effect, which gives a highly nonlinear response current. Here we investigate the optical response of a metal–insulator–nanoparticle–insulator–metal structure and show switching of a plasmonic gap from insulator to conductor via Coulomb blockade. By introducing a sufficiently large charging energy in the tunnelling gap, the Coulomb blockade allows for a conductor (tunneling) to insulator (capacitor) transition. The tunnelling electrons can be delocalized over the nanocapacitor again when a high energy penalty is added with bias. We demonstrate that this has a huge impact on the plasmonic resonance of a 0.51 nm tunneling gap with ∼70% change in normalized optical loss. Because this structure has a tiny capacitance, there is potential to harness the effect for high-speed switching.
Description
Keywords
Coulomb blockade, nanoparticles, quantum tunnelling, switching
Citation
Xiang, D., Wu, J., & Gordon, R. (2017). Coulomb blockade plasmonic switch. Nano Letters, 17(4), 2584–2588. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b00360