Phys.org April 14, 2023
Optical computing with optical transistors has emerged as a possible solution to the growing computational workloads, yet an on-chip nano-optical modulation remains a challenge due to the intrinsically noninteracting nature of photons in addition to the diffraction limit. An international team of researchers (South Korea, Russia) has presented an all-optical approach toward nano-excitonic transistors using an atomically thin heterobilayer inside a plasmonic tip-based nanocavity. Through optical wavefront shaping, they selectively modulated tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL) responses of intra- and interlayer excitons in a ∼25 nm2 area, demonstrating the enabling concept of an ultrathin 2-bit nano-excitonic transistor. They suggested a simple theoretical model describing the underlying adaptive TEPL modulation mechanism, which relies on the additional spatial degree of freedom provided by the presence of the plasmonic tip. They experimentally demonstrated a concept of a 2-trit nano-excitonic transistor, which can provide a technical basis for processing the massive amounts of data generated by emerging artificial intelligence technologies… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Graphical abstract. Credit: ACS Nano 2023, 17, 5, 4854–4861, March 1, 2023