Excitation Enhancement of a Quantum Dot Coupled to a Plasmonic Antenna
Check our work recently published online at the Advanded Materials website. For the first time, we investigate experimentally the luminescence enhancement of a single quantum dot deterministically coupled to a plasmonic gap antenna. We also provide the full information hidden behind this luminescence enhancement by quantifying independently the excitation enhancement and quenching effects.
Our approach combines two technological breakthroughs: (i) the custom-synthesis of colloidal QD with controlled multiply excited states, and (ii) the deterministic QD-antenna coupling via double step e-beam lithography. A remarkable feature is that excitation enhancement can still be investigated even in the presence of strong quenching losses affecting the emission. This study provides new routes to experimentally investigate the physics of optical antennas, and optimize the excitation and emission processes independently for the future development of bright single-photon sources and biochemical sensors.
This research is done in close collaboration with the groups of Dan Oron at Weizmann Institute of Science and Romain Quidant at ICFO, and is conducted in the scope of the NaBi associated European laboratory.