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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Trapping of Micro Particles in Nanoplasmonic Optical Lattice
Published on: September 5, 2017
Visualization of Nanoplasmonic Coupling to Molecular Orbital in Light Emission Induced by Tunneling Electrons
Arthur Yu1, Shaowei Li1, Hui Wang1
1Department of Physics and Astronomy , University of California , Irvine , California 92697-4575 , United States.
Abstract:
The coupling between localized plasmon and molecular orbital in the light emission from a metallic nanocavity has been directly detected and imaged with sub-0.1 nm resolution. The light emission intensity was enhanced when the energy difference between the tunneling electrons and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of an azulene molecule matches the energy of a plasmon mode of the nanocavity defined by the Ag-tip and Ag (110) substrate of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The spatially resolved image of the light emission intensity matches the spatial distribution of the LUMO obtained by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Our results highlight the near-field coupling of a molecular orbital to the radiative decay of a plasmonic excitation in a confined nanoscale junction.
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