Plasmonic nanostar photocathodes for optically-controlled directional currents

Jacob Pettine, Priscilla Choo, Fabio Medeghini, Teri W. Odom () and David J. Nesbitt ()
Additional contact information
Jacob Pettine: University of Colorado Boulder and National Institute of Standards and Technology
Priscilla Choo: Northwestern University
Fabio Medeghini: University of Colorado Boulder and National Institute of Standards and Technology
Teri W. Odom: Northwestern University
David J. Nesbitt: University of Colorado Boulder and National Institute of Standards and Technology

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Plasmonic nanocathodes offer unique opportunities for optically driving, switching, and steering femtosecond photocurrents in nanoelectronic devices and pulsed electron sources. However, angular photocurrent distributions in nanoplasmonic systems remain poorly understood and are therefore difficult to anticipate and control. Here, we provide a direct momentum-space characterization of multiphoton photoemission from plasmonic gold nanostars and demonstrate all-optical control over these currents. Versatile angular control is achieved by selectively exciting different tips on single nanostars via laser frequency or linear polarization, thereby rotating the tip-aligned directional photoemission as observed with angle-resolved 2D velocity mapping and 3D reconstruction. Classical plasmonic field simulations combined with quantum photoemission theory elucidate the role of surface-mediated nonlinear excitation for plasmonic field enhancements highly concentrated at the sharp tips (Rtip = 3.4 nm). We thus establish a simple mechanism for femtosecond spatiotemporal current control in designer nanosystems.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15115-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15115-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15115-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().