Tunable UV-Emitters through Graphene Plasmonics

Journal Article · Thu Dec 14 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Nano Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b04146· OSTI ID:1470500

Sloan, Jamison  ^[1]; Rivera, Nicholas  ^[1]; Soljačić, Marin ^[1]; Kaminer, Ido ^[2]

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1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics
2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Solid State Inst., Technion, Haifa (Israel). Dept. of Electrical Engineering

Control over the spontaneous emission of light through tailored optical environments remains a fundamental paradigm in nanophotonics. The use of highly confined plasmons in materials such as graphene provides a promising platform to enhance transition rates in the IR-THz by many orders of magnitude. However, such enhancements involve near-field plasmon modes or other kinds of near-field coupling like quenching, and it is challenging to use these highly confined modes to harness light in the far-field due to the difficulty of plasmonic outcoupling. Here in this paper, we propose that through the use of radiative cascade chains in multilevel emitters, IR plasmons can be used to enhance far field spectra in the visible and UV range, even at energies greater than 10 eV. Combining Purcell-enhancement engineering, graphene plasmonics, and radiative cascade can result in a new type of UV emitter whose properties can be tuned by electrically doping graphene. Varying the distance between the emitter and the graphene surface can change the strength of the far-field emission lines by 2 orders of magnitude. We also find that the dependence of the far-field emission on the Fermi energy is potentially extremely sharp at the onset of interband transitions, allowing the Fermi energy to effectively serve as a “switch” for turning on and off certain plasmonic and far-field emissions.

• Research Organization: Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577
• OSTI ID: 1470500
• Journal Information: Nano Letters, Vol. 18, Issue 1; Related Information: S3TEC partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead); Boston College; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; ISSN 1530-6984
• Publisher: American Chemical Society
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
graphene
spectroscopy
plasmonics
uv
tunability
solar (photovoltaic)
solar (thermal)
solid state lighting
phonons
thermal conductivity
thermoelectric
defects
mechanical behavior
charge transport
spin dynamics
materials and chemistry by design
optics
synthesis (novel materials)
synthesis (self-assembly)
synthesis (scalable processing)