TY - JOUR
T1 - Probing the mechanisms of large Purcell enhancement in plasmonic nanoantennas
AU - Akselrod, Gleb M.
AU - Argyropoulos, Christos
AU - Hoang, Thang B.
AU - Ciracì, Cristian
AU - Fang, Chao
AU - Huang, Jiani
AU - Smith, David R.
AU - Mikkelsen, Maiken H.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank A. Rose, R. Hill and A. Baron for discussions. This work was supported by the Lord Foundation of North Carolina and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (contract no. FA9550-12-1-0491).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/11/5
Y1 - 2014/11/5
N2 - To move nanophotonic devices such as lasers and single-photon sources into the practical realm, a challenging list of requirements must be met, including directional emission, room-temperature and broadband operation, high radiative quantum efficiency and a large spontaneous emission rate. To achieve these features simultaneously, a platform is needed for which the various decay channels of embedded emitters can be fully understood and controlled. Here, we show that all these device requirements can be satisfied by a film-coupled metal nanocube system with emitters embedded in the dielectric gap region. Fluorescence lifetime measurements on ensembles of emitters reveal spontaneous emission rate enhancements exceeding 1,000 while maintaining high quantum efficiency (>0.5) and directional emission (84% collection efficiency). Using angle-resolved fluorescence measurements, we independently determine the orientations of emission dipoles in the nanoscale gap. Incorporating this information with the three-dimensional spatial distribution of dipoles into full-wave simulations predicts time-resolved emission in excellent agreement with experiments.
AB - To move nanophotonic devices such as lasers and single-photon sources into the practical realm, a challenging list of requirements must be met, including directional emission, room-temperature and broadband operation, high radiative quantum efficiency and a large spontaneous emission rate. To achieve these features simultaneously, a platform is needed for which the various decay channels of embedded emitters can be fully understood and controlled. Here, we show that all these device requirements can be satisfied by a film-coupled metal nanocube system with emitters embedded in the dielectric gap region. Fluorescence lifetime measurements on ensembles of emitters reveal spontaneous emission rate enhancements exceeding 1,000 while maintaining high quantum efficiency (>0.5) and directional emission (84% collection efficiency). Using angle-resolved fluorescence measurements, we independently determine the orientations of emission dipoles in the nanoscale gap. Incorporating this information with the three-dimensional spatial distribution of dipoles into full-wave simulations predicts time-resolved emission in excellent agreement with experiments.
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U2 - 10.1038/nphoton.2014.228
DO - 10.1038/nphoton.2014.228
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84908495007
SN - 1749-4885
VL - 8
SP - 835
EP - 840
JO - Nature Photonics
JF - Nature Photonics
IS - 11
ER -