We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically a broad-band enhancement of the spontaneous two-photon emission from AlGaAs at room temperature by plasmonic nanoantenna arrays fabricated on the semiconductor surface. Plasmonic structures with inherently low quality factors but very small effective volumes are shown to be optimal. A 20-fold enhancement was achieved for the entire antenna array, corresponding to an enhancement of nearly 3 orders of magnitude for charge carriers emitting at the near field of a plasmonic antenna.KEYWORDS Semiconductors, two-photon emission, nanoparticles, plasmonic enhancement O ver the past decade, a growing interest has been focused on exploiting the tight confinement of the electromagnetic field achievable in the vicinity of a metal-dielectric boundary, commonly referred to as surface plasmon polariton (SPP), for enhancing the efficiency of spontaneous emission in semiconductors, 1-3 and it has been shown that such enhancement is highly significant for very inefficient emitters. 4 These endeavors follow the success of using SPPs for the enhancement of nonlinear phenomena, including the surface enhancement of Raman scattering by many orders of magnitude, 5 surface-enhanced second-harmonic generation, 6 and the recent demonstration of high-harmonic generation by coupling to bow-tie nanoantennas. 7 It was also shown that SPPs preserve many key quantum properties of the photons used to excite them, including entanglement, 8,9 and the quantization theory of surface plasmon fields was developed 10 and experimentally demonstrated, 11 allowing an array of new applications in quantum information processing. Two-photon emission (TPE) is a nonlinear process with unique quantum properties, important in different realms of science. TPE from a semiconductor results from electronhole recombination with the simultaneous emission of two photons. Semiconductor TPE was recently observed 12 and theoretically analyzed, 13 and current-induced two-photon transparency was demonstrated, 14 paving the way for the realization of room-temperature miniature devices, including semiconductor two-photon lasers 15 and photon pair sources. 16 However, TPE is an inherently weak second-order process, and therefore enhancing mechanisms could significantly widen the range of its applications. Since the emission spectrum of spontaneous TPE is very wide band due to the large energy uncertainty of the virtual state, regular dielectric optical cavities with a very high qualityfactor, Q, and thus very narrow bandwidth 17 may enhance emission at specific wavelengths; 18 however, they are unable to enhance the broad spectrum of TPE. Plasmonic cavities, on the other hand, enhancing the field by significantly reducing the mode volume at low Q, 19 are optimal.Here we report the first experimental observation of plasmon-enhanced spontaneous TPE from semiconductors, by coupling the emission to bow-tie nanoantenna arrays, having efficient radiative coupling of plasmons to far-field light. 20 The broad band TPE from AlGaA...
Quasi-two-dimensional semiconductor materials are desirable for electronic, photonic, and energy conversion applications as well as fundamental science. We report on the synthesis of indium phosphide flag-like nanostructures by epitaxial growth on a nanowire template at 95% yield. The technique is based on in situ catalyst unpinning from the top of the nanowire and its induced migration along the nanowire sidewall. Investigation of the mechanism responsible for catalyst movement shows that its final position is determined by the structural defect density along the nanowire. The crystal structure of the "flagpole" nanowire is epitaxially transferred to the nanoflag. Pure wurtzite InP nanomembranes with just a single stacking fault originating from the defect in the flagpole that pinned the catalyst were obtained. Optical characterization shows efficient highly polarized photoluminescence at room temperature from a single nanoflag with up to 90% degree of linear polarization. Electric field intensity enhancement of the incident light was calculated to be 57, concentrated at the nanoflag tip. The presented growth method is general and thus can be employed for achieving similar nanostructures in other III-V semiconductor material systems with potential applications in active nanophotonics.
Semiconductor nanostructures are desirable for electronics, photonics, quantum circuitry, and energy conversion applications as well as for fundamental science. In photonics, optical nanoantennas mediate the large size difference between photons and semiconductor nanoemitters or detectors and hence are instrumental for exhibiting high efficiency. In this work we present epitaxially grown InP nanoflags as optically active nanostructures encapsulating the desired characteristics of a photonic emitter and an efficient epitaxial nanoantenna. We experimentally characterize the polarized and directional emission of the nanoflag-antenna and show the control of these properties by means of structure, dimensions, and constituents. We analyze field enhancement and light extraction by the semiconductor nanoflag antenna, which yield comparable values to enhancement factors of metallic plasmonic antennas. We incorporated quantum emitters within the nanoflag structure and characterized their emission properties. Merging of active nanoemitters with nanoantennas at a single growth process enables a new class of devices to be used in nanophotonics applications.
We have designed, fabricated and measured the first plasmon-assisted normal incidence GaN/AlN quantum cascade detector (QCD) making use of the surface plasmon resonance of a two-dimensional nanohole Au array integrated on top of the detector absorption region. The spectral response of the detector at room temperature is peaked at the plasmon resonance of 1.82 μm. We show that the presence of the nanohole array induces an absolute enhancement of the responsivity by a factor of ~30 over that of the bare device at normal incidence and by a factor of 3 with respect to illumination by the 45° polished side facet. We show that this significant improvement arises from two phenomena, namely, the polarization rotation of the impinging light from tangential to normal induced by the plasmonic structure and from the enhancement of the absorption cross-section per quantum well due to the near-field optical intensity of the plasmonic wave.
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