Ultra-Fast Light Energy Transfer with Suppressed Losses Through Hot-Spots in Heterogeneous Plasmonic Arrays

Plasmonic materials effectively confine light beyond the diffraction limit, being a useful tool in Nanophotonics for a diverse range of applications, from sensing to energy harvesting. They have proven difficult to use, however, as a means for energy transportation: Although a nanostructured metallic guide, be it as a surface supporting SPPs or as an array of nanoparticles in near-field interaction, has the capability of constraining the spatial evolution of an electromagnetic excitation, the high losses characteristic to metals make this a problematic approach to energy transfer. To partially circumvent this limitation, we propose the use of heterogeneous arrays of plasmonic nanoparticles, using different metals with resonances that are not spectrally aligned. We propose a system that exemplified this approach, built using gold and silver nanoparticles, precisely aligned using DNA origami technique [1]. We show computationally that a silver particle in a trimer suppresses energy transfer losses, and report observation of features of such loss-less transfer [1]. Similar complexes could be useful as connection and control elements in hybrid or all-optical computing devices.

[1] E.-M. Roller, L.V. Besteiro et al. Nat. Phys. 13, 761-765 (2017)