Nanometallics
The Idea:
To design and fabricate efficient photonic devices such as single photon emitters or light emitting devices by using surface plasmon (SP) modes.
Reasons:
Surface Plasmons have potentially smaller mode volume than modes in pure dielectric, which enhance light-matter interactions in either the strong or weak (Purcell) coupling regime. In fact, Surface plasmon modes are low Q and are simple to implement as large area arrays. Large average enhancements can thus be achieved in broadband and broad area devices. Such large Purcell enhancement improves the efficiency of many emitters, by increasing the radiative emission rate compared to other non-radiative rates. As such, plasmonic modes can be used to increase the emission from inefficient emitters such as erbium and silicon nanocrystals. Likewise, plasmonic modes can improve the emission characteristics of single photon emitters in the same manner.
Challenges:
As metals are lossy in the optical regime, plasmonic modes should be designed to avoid the high losses, by decreasing the overlap with the metallic portions. Such designs require an accurately modeling of metal-dielectric interfaces in the optical regime in FDTD simulations. In addition, the emission properties of plasmonic modes can be tuned by the size of the structure, while the polarization properties can be adjusted with one- or two-dimensional designs. Finally, efficient integration of metal with the emitters in dielectric or semi-conductors requires proper design. In some cases, such as Er doped silicon nitride, the material can be deposited directly on metal, allowing a simple bottom-up fabrication process to fabricate metal-insulator-metal devices without lift-off and bonding techniques.
Collaborators:
- Er doped silicon-rich silicon nitride: Rui Li, Joe Warga, Prof. Luca Dal Negro, Boston University (2007-present)
- Silicon nano-crystals embedded in silicon oxide: Szu-Lin Cheng, Satoshi Ishikawa, Prof. Yoshio Nishi, Stanford University (2008-2009).
Publications:
- Enhanced Light Emission from Erbium Doped Silicon Nitride in
Plasmonic Metal-Insulator-Metal Structures, Yiyang Gong, Selcuk Yerci, Rui Li,
Luca Dal Negro, Jelena Vuckovic, Optics Express, Vol 17, pp 18651-18658 (2009) (arXiv:0908.3901)
- Plasmonic Enhancement of Emission from Si-nanocrystals, Yiyang Gong, Jesse Lu, Szu-Lin Cheng, Yoshio Nishi,
Jelena Vuckovic, Applied Physics Letters, Vol 94, article 013106 (2009) (arXiv:0810.4747)
- Spontaneous Emission Control in High-Extraction Efficiency Plasmonic Crystals,
Hideo Iwase, Dirk Englund, Jelena Vuckovic, Optics Express, Vol 16, pp 426-434 (2008) (arXiv:0711.4879)
- Design of plasmon cavities for solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics
applications, Yiyang Gong and Jelena Vuckovic, Applied Physics Letters , vol. 90, article 033113 (2007) (arXiv:quant-ph/0609169)
last modified on Sunday December 20, 2009
