Electrically Controlled Scattering in a Hybrid Dielectric-Plasmonic Nanoantenna

Electrically tunable devices in nanophotonics offer an exciting opportunity to combine electrical and optical functions, opening up their applications in active photonic devices. Silicon as a kind of high refractive index dielectric material has shown comparable performances with plasmonic nanostructures in tailoring and modulating the electromagnetic waves. However, there are few studies on electrically tunable silicon nanoantennas. Here, for the first time we realize the spectral tailoring of an individual silicon nanoparticle in the visible range through changing the applied voltage. We observe that the plasmon-dielectric hybrid resonant peaks experience blue shift and obvious intensity attenuation with increasing the bias voltages from 0 to 1.5 V. A physical model has been established to explain how the applied voltage influences the carrier concentration and how carrier concentration modifies the permittivity of silicon and then the final scattering spectra. Our findings pave a new approach to build excellent tunable nanoantennas or other nanophotonics devices where the optical responses can be purposely controlled by electrical signals.