Electrical and picosecond optical control of plasmonic nanoantenna hybrid devices

芯片上集成电子和光子功能的光学元件小型化是实现下一代集成光电电路的新领域之一。一个特别吸引人的前景是实现电子晶体管的光学模拟，它构成了我们的计算机的组成部分。我们的方法涉及一种纳米级的无线电波天线，即等离子纳米天线。等离子体天线的设计是为了克服光的衍射极限，并将光聚焦到纳米尺寸的天线“馈电”间隙中。在我们由EPSRC支持的第一项研究中，我们提出了多种利用纳米天线与有源衬底混合相互作用的设备。在这里，我们的目标是对这种混合天线设备进行全面的研究，包括各种几何形状和金属氧化物衬底，其中等离子体天线将被用作有源衬底的纳米级敏化剂。纳米天线开关与纳米电子晶体管的集成将产生一类新的光电器件：纳米天线MOSFET。所提出的光电控制的纳米天线装置是一个巨大的兴趣，为片上控制的电光信息的桥梁。此外，局部场和天线辐射模式的超快主动控制将在非线性光学、拉曼传感器和光量子信息技术中实现新的应用。

Miniaturization of optical components for on-chip integration of electronic and photonic functionalities is one of the new frontiers with the promise of enabling a next generation of integrated optoelectronic circuits. A particularly fascinating prospect is the achievement of an optical analogue of the electronic transistor, which forms the building block of our computers. Our approach involves a nanoscale version of a radiowave antenna, the plasmonic nanoantenna. Plasmonic antennas are designed to overcome the diffraction limit of light and to focus light into a nanometer-sized antenna 'feed' gap. In our first studies supported by EPSRC we have proposed a variety of devices exploiting hybrid interactions of a nanoantenna with an active substrate. Here, we aim to launch a full-scale investigation of such hybrid antenna devices including various geometries and metal oxide substrates, where the plasmonic antenna will be exploited as a nanoscale sensitizer for the active substrate. Integration of a nanoantenna switches with a nanoelectronic transistor will yield a new class of optoelectronic devices: the nanoantenna MOSFET.The proposed optically and electrically controlled nanoantenna devices are of enormous interest as a bridge for on-chip control of electrical and optical information. In addition, ultrafast active control of local fields and antenna radiation patterns will enable new applications in nonlinear optics, Raman sensors, and optical quantum information technology.