Plasmonic off-axis unidirectional beaming of quantum-well luminescence

Plasmonic off-axis unidirectional beaming of luminescence is demonstrated using nitride semiconductor quantum wells. The underlying mechanism involves the near-field excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on an ultrathin metal film, which are then diffractively scattered by an adjacent periodic array of asymmetric metallic nanoparticles. By tailoring the nanoparticles shape, we show that forward scattering can be suppressed in favor of backward diffraction (or vice versa), thereby enabling unidirectional beaming at geometrically tunable oblique angles. These nanostructures can be used to control the output light directionality of arbitrary planar luminescent devices, with a spatial resolution that would be unattainable with bulk optics. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.