Fano Resonance in an Electrically Driven Plasmonic Device

Abstract

We present an electrically driven plasmonic device consisting of a gold nanoparticle trapped in a gap between two electrodes. The tunneling current in the device generates plasmons, which decay radiatively. The emitted spectrum extends up to an energy that depends on the applied voltage. Characterization of the electrical conductance at low temperatures allows us to extract the voltage drop on each tunnel barrier and the corresponding emitted spectrum. In several devices we find a pronounced sharp asymmetrical dip in the spectrum, which we identify as a Fano resonance. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) calculations reveal that this resonance is due to interference between the nanoparticle and electrodes dipolar fields, and can be conveniently controlled by the structural parameters.