LAUSR

Electrically driven optical antenna (EDOA) provides a nanoscale light-emitting scheme that is appealing for biosensors, plasmonic displays, and on-chip optoelectronic circuits. The EDOA (consisted of metal nanoparticles (NPs)) excited by inelastic tunneling electrons have attracted broad interest due to their terahertz modulation bandwidth and microelectronics compatible dimensions. Currently, the efficient fabrication of EDOA is hampered by the ultrasmall size of NPs and the requirement of controllable preparation. Here, we overcome this limitation by accurately positioning thiol-covered gold NPs onto pre-designed electrodes using dielectrophoresis trapping. The combination of a high-quality molecule tunnel barrier and the template trapping ensures that the EDOA can operate stably at the ambient conditions. More importantly, the template trapping allows fabricating EDOA with different numbers and arrangements of NPs by controlling the size and orientation of the template. This technology provides a way to fabricate controllable optoelectronic devices based on NPs and is promising for compact and smart photonic devices.