Nanogaps Between Metals Create Light Ten Thousand Times Brighter Than Expected | NextBigFuture.com

Nanogaps between plasmonic electrodes produced 10,000 times more light than expected. Hot electrons were created by electrons driven to tunnel between gold electrodes, their recombination with holes emitted bright light, and the greater the input voltage, the brighter the light. This could be useful for applications in optoelectronics, quantum optics and photocatalysis. The effect depends upon the metal’s plasmons, ripples of energy that flow across its surface. Researchers formed several metals into microscopic, bow tie-shaped electrodes with nanogaps, a test bed developed by the lab that lets them perform simultaneous electron transport and optical spectroscopy. Gold was the best performer