Probing the electrical switching of a memristive optical antenna by STEM EELS

David T. Schoen, Aaron L. Holsteen and Mark L. Brongersma ()
Additional contact information
David T. Schoen: Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University
Aaron L. Holsteen: Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University
Mark L. Brongersma: Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The scaling of active photonic devices to deep-submicron length scales has been hampered by the fundamental diffraction limit and the absence of materials with sufficiently strong electro-optic effects. Plasmonics is providing new opportunities to circumvent this challenge. Here we provide evidence for a solid-state electro-optical switching mechanism that can operate in the visible spectral range with an active volume of less than (5 nm)3 or ∼10−6 λ3, comparable to the size of the smallest electronic components. The switching mechanism relies on electrochemically displacing metal atoms inside the nanometre-scale gap to electrically connect two crossed metallic wires forming a cross-point junction. These junctions afford extreme light concentration and display singular optical behaviour upon formation of a conductive channel. The active tuning of plasmonic antennas attached to such junctions is analysed using a combination of electrical and optical measurements as well as electron energy loss spectroscopy in a scanning transmission electron microscope.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12162 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:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12162

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12162

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 ().