Nano antennas for data transfer

Science Daily  January 8, 2020 To enable antennas to operate at higher frequencies allow higher bandwidths and smaller footprints directional antennas have to be shrunk to nanometre scale. Researchers in Germany demonstrated electrically driven Yagi-Uda antennas for light with wavelength-scale footprints that exhibit large directionalities with forward-to-backward ratios of up to 9.1 dB. Light generation is achieved via antenna-enhanced inelastic tunneling of electrons over the antenna feed gap. They obtained reproducible tunnel gaps by means of feedback-controlled dielectrophoresis to precisely place single surface-passivated gold nanoparticles in the antenna gap. The resulting antennas performed equivalent to radio-frequency antennas and outperformed RF designs. […]