Surface Plasmons and Field Electron Emission In Metal Nanostructures

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how surface plasmons in metallic nanostructures enhance electromagnetic fields, leading to electron emission, and compares theoretical predictions with experimental data to understand field stabilization and breakdown phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of surface plasmon-induced field enhancement in nanostructures, explaining experimental results and implications for electron emission and system stability.

Findings

Maximum field enhancement of about 100 times

Intensity enhancement of approximately 10,000 times

Theoretical results align well with experimental data

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the field enhancement due to surface plasmons resonances of metallic nanostructures, in particular nano spheres on top of a metal, and find maximum field enhancement of the order of 10^2, intensities enhancement of the order of 10^4. Naturally these fields can produce temporal fields of the order of 0.5V/{\AA} that yield field emission of electrons. Although the fields enhancements we calculated are factor of 10 smaller than those reported in recent experiments, our results explain very well the experimental data. Very large atomic fields destabilize the system completely emitting ions, at least for static field, and produce electric breakdown. In any case, we prove that the data are striking and can solve problems in providing stabilized current of static fields for which future experiments should be done for obtaining pulsed beams of electrons.