Abstract
The miniaturization of electronic and photonic device technologies has facilitated information processing and transport at ever-increasing speeds and decreasing power levels. Nanometallics or ‘plasmonics’ has empowered us to break the diffraction limit and open the door to the development of truly nanoscale optical circuits. A logical next step in this development is the realization of compact optical sources capable of electrically driving such nanocircuits. Nanometallic lasers are a possible candidate, but the realization of power-efficient, electrically pumped nanolasers at room temperature is extremely challenging. Here, we explore a plasmonic light-emitting diode as a possible alternative option. We demonstrate that an electrically driven, nano light-emitting diode is capable of directing light emission into a single-mode plasmon waveguide with a cross-sectional area of 0.016λ2 by exploiting the Purcell effect. With this source, electrically driven subwavelength optical nanocircuits for routing, splitting, free-space coupling and directional coupling are realized for the first time.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge funding support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (G. Pomrenke, grant no. FA9550-10-1-0264). M.-K.S. acknowledges support for this work by the Basic Science Research Program (2011-0015119 and 2009-0087691) of National Research Foundation of Korea and the Korean Ministry of Education. The authors thank W. Cai and A. Curto for discussions.
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M.-K.S. and M.L.B. conceived the idea. K.C.Y.H. and M.-K.S. designed the structures. Y.H. and T.S. performed the molecular beam epitaxial growth of the quantum-well structure under the supervision of J.S.H. K.C.Y.H. and M.-K.S. performed theoretical calculations and full-field simulations. K.C.Y.H. and M.-K.S. fabricated and characterized the samples. K.C.Y.H. and M.L.B. wrote the manuscript. M.L.B. supervised the project.
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Huang, K., Seo, MK., Sarmiento, T. et al. Electrically driven subwavelength optical nanocircuits. Nature Photon 8, 244–249 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.2
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