Optical rectification and thermal currents in optical tunneling gap antennas

Abstract

Electrically-contacted optical gap antennas are nanoscale interface devices enabling the transduction between photons and electrons. This new generation of device, usually constituted of metal elements (e.g. gold), captures visible to near infrared electromagnetic radiation and rectifies the incident energy in a direct-current (DC) electrical signal. However, light absorption by the metal may lead to additional thermal effects which need to be taken into account to understand the complete photo-response of the devices. The purpose of this communication is to discriminate the contribution of laser-induced thermo-electric effects in the photo-assisted electronic transport. We show case our analysis with the help of electromigrated devices.

Keywords

• optical gap antennas
• optical rectification
• photo-assisted transport
• rectennas
• thermo-current
• thermo-voltage