Efficient single-emitter plasmonic patch antenna fabrication by novel deterministic in situ optical lithography using spatially modulated light

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical lithography method for precisely fabricating plasmonic antennas with embedded single quantum dots, significantly enhancing emission efficiency and brightness at room temperature.

Contribution

The study presents a new deterministic in situ optical lithography technique using spatially modulated light for nanoscale placement of emitters in plasmonic antennas, enabling non-destructive fabrication.

Findings

1000-fold increase in emitter absorption cross-section

Nonlinear enhancement of emission under high pumping

Efficient room-temperature single-photon source creation

Abstract

Single-emitter plasmonic patch antennas are room-temperature deterministic single photon sources, which exhibit highly accelerated and directed single photon emission. However, for efficient operation these structures require three-dimensional nanoscale deterministic control of emitter positioning within the device, which is a demanding task, esp. when emitter damage during fabrication is a major concern. To overcome this limitation, our deterministic room-temperature in situ optical lithography protocol uses spatially modulated light to position a plasmonic structure non-destructively on any selected single-emitter with three-dimensional nanoscale control. In this paper we analyze the emission statistics of such plasmonic antennas that embed a deterministically positioned single colloidal CdSe/CdS quantum dot that highlight acceleration and brightness of emission. We demonstrate that the antenna induces a 1000-fold increase in the emitter absorption cross-section, and under high pumping, these antennas show nonlinearly enhanced emission.