UC San Diego

Conversion of photons to electrical energy has a wide variety of applications including imaging, solar energy harvesting, and infrared detection. The coupling of electromagnetic radiation to free electron oscillations at a metal interface results in interesting properties including enhanced electric fields tightly confined to the surface. Taking advantage of this nonlinear light-matter interaction, this work presents a variety of resonant surfaces optimized for combining electrical and photonic excitations in order to liberate electrons in a vacuum-channel device for applications ranging from enhanced photoemission, optical rectification, and infrared photodetection.