Optical antennas driven by quantum tunneling: a key issues review

Analogous to radio- and microwave antennas, optical nanoantennas are devices that receive and emit radiation at optical frequencies. Until recently, the realization of electrically driven optical antennas was an outstanding challenge in nanophotonics. In this review we discuss and analyze recent reports in which quantum tunneling—specifically inelastic electron tunneling—is harnessed as a means to convert electrical energy into photons, mediated by optical antennas. To aid this analysis we introduce the fundamentals of optical antennas and inelastic electron tunneling. Our discussion is focused on recent progress in the field and on future directions and opportunities.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society

• Publication date

  2019-09-06

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1088/1361-6633/ab4239arXiv 1910.01224PMID 31491785
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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