Luminescence enhancement in inelastic tunnelling of electrons by changing the geometry of the tunnelling contact

Physical optics
Authors:
Abstract:

We have experimentally investigated the light emission resulting from inelastic electron tunneling in the transition with hemispherical gold nanoantennas (d = 400 nm, h = 300 nm) created by direct fs-laser ablation. We found two  characteristic modes of luminescence: standard - increased signal is observed in the region of nanoantennas at tunneling currents below 2.25 nA and inverted-anomalous, where the gold surface is mainly luminescent, while dark  spots are observed on the antennas on the contrary. In the inverted-anomalous mode we observe record signal values of 5·104 photons per second. We attribute the anomalous effect to the realization of a conditionality for resonant  tunneling of electrons with excitation of optical states.