Switchable Metal-Insulator Phase Transition Metamaterials

We investigate the switching of a gap plasmon tunnel junction between conducting and insulating states. Hysteresis is observed in the second and the third harmonic generation power dependence, which arises by thermally induced disorder ("melting") of a two-carbon self-assembled monolayer between an ultraflat gold surface and metal nanoparticles. The hysteresis is observed for a variety of nanoparticle sizes, but not for larger tunnel junctions where there is no appreciable tunneling. By combining quantum corrected finite-difference time-domain simulations with nonlinear scattering theory, we calculate the changes in the harmonic generation between the tunneling and the insulating states, and good agreement is found with the experiments. This paves the way to a new class of metal-insulator phase transition switchable metamaterials, which may provide next-generation information processing technologies.