Hybrid Optical–Thermal Antennas for Enhanced Light Focusing and Local Temperature Control

Metal nanoantennas supporting localized surface plasmon resonances have become an indispensable tool in bio(chemical) sensing and nanoscale imaging applications. The high plasmon-enhanced electric field intensity in the visible or near-IR range that enables the above applications may also cause loca...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Boriskina, Svetlana V, Weinstein, Lee Adragon, Tong, Jonathan K., Hsu, Wei-Chun, Chen, Gang
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Chemical Society (ACS) 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110971
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8917-7547
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3973-8067
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8121-8017
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3968-8530
Description
Summary:Metal nanoantennas supporting localized surface plasmon resonances have become an indispensable tool in bio(chemical) sensing and nanoscale imaging applications. The high plasmon-enhanced electric field intensity in the visible or near-IR range that enables the above applications may also cause local heating of nanoantennas. We present a design of hybrid optical–thermal antennas that simultaneously enable intensity enhancement at the operating wavelength in the visible and nanoscale local temperature control. We demonstrate a possibility to reduce the hybrid antenna operating temperature via enhanced infrared thermal emission. We predict via rigorous numerical modeling that hybrid optical–thermal antennas that support high-quality-factor photonic-plasmonic modes enable up to 2 orders of magnitude enhancement of localized electric fields and of the optical power absorbed in the nanoscale metal volume. At the same time, the hybrid antenna temperature can be lowered by several hundred degrees with respect to its all-metal counterpart under continuous irradiance of 10⁴–10⁵ W/m². The temperature reduction effect is attributed to the enhanced radiative cooling, which is mediated by the thermally excited localized surface phonon polariton modes. We further show that temperature reduction under even higher irradiances can be achieved by a combination of enhanced radiative and convective cooling in hybrid antennas. Finally, we demonstrate how hybrid optical–thermal antennas can be used to achieve strong localized heating of nanoparticles while keeping the rest of the optical chip at low temperature.