Waveguide-Integrated Light-Emitting Metal–Insulator–Graphene Tunnel Junctions

TY - JOUR

T1 - Waveguide-Integrated Light-Emitting Metal–Insulator–Graphene Tunnel Junctions

AU - Liu, Lufang

AU - Krasavin, Alexey

AU - Li, Jialin

AU - Li, Linjun

AU - Yang, Liu

AU - Guo, Xin

AU - Dai, Daoxin

AU - Zayats, Anatoly

AU - Tong, Limin

AU - Wang, Pan

N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 62075195, 12004333, 92250305, 92150302 and 91950205), National Key Research and Development Project of China (Grant 2018YFB2200404), UK EPSRC (EP/W017075/1), ERC iCOMM Project (Grant 789340), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (226-2022-00147). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

PY - 2023/5/10

Y1 - 2023/5/10

N2 - Ultrafast interfacing of electrical and optical signals at the nanoscale is highly desired for on-chip applications including optical interconnects and data processing devices. Here, we report electrically driven nanoscale optical sources based on metal–insulator–graphene tunnel junctions (MIG-TJs), featuring waveguided output with broadband spectral characteristics. Electrically driven inelastic tunneling in a MIG-TJ, realized by integrating a silver nanowire with graphene, provides broadband excitation of plasmonic modes in the junction with propagation lengths of several micrometers (∼10 times larger than that for metal–insulator–metal junctions), which therefore propagate toward the junction edge with low loss and couple to the nanowire waveguide with an efficiency of ∼70% (∼1000 times higher than that for metal–insulator–metal junctions). Alternatively, lateral coupling of the MIG-TJ to a semiconductor nanowire provides a platform for efficient outcoupling of electrically driven plasmonic signals to low-loss photonic waveguides, showing potential for applications at various integration levels.

AB - Ultrafast interfacing of electrical and optical signals at the nanoscale is highly desired for on-chip applications including optical interconnects and data processing devices. Here, we report electrically driven nanoscale optical sources based on metal–insulator–graphene tunnel junctions (MIG-TJs), featuring waveguided output with broadband spectral characteristics. Electrically driven inelastic tunneling in a MIG-TJ, realized by integrating a silver nanowire with graphene, provides broadband excitation of plasmonic modes in the junction with propagation lengths of several micrometers (∼10 times larger than that for metal–insulator–metal junctions), which therefore propagate toward the junction edge with low loss and couple to the nanowire waveguide with an efficiency of ∼70% (∼1000 times higher than that for metal–insulator–metal junctions). Alternatively, lateral coupling of the MIG-TJ to a semiconductor nanowire provides a platform for efficient outcoupling of electrically driven plasmonic signals to low-loss photonic waveguides, showing potential for applications at various integration levels.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85156274403&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04975

DO - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04975

M3 - Article

SN - 1530-6984

VL - 23

SP - 3731

EP - 3738

JO - Nano Letters

JF - Nano Letters

IS - 9

ER -