Resonant inelastic tunneling using multiple metallic quantum wells

Tunnel nanojunctions based on inelastic electron tunneling (IET) have been heralded as a breakthrough for ultra-fast integrated light sources. However, the majority of electrons tend to tunnel through a junction elastically, resulting in weak photon-emission power and limited efficiency, which have hindered their practical applications to date. Resonant tunneling has been proposed as a way to alleviate this limitation, butphoton-emissions under resonant tunneling conditions have remained unsatisfactory for practical IET-based light sources due to the inherent contradiction between high photon-emission efficiency and power. In this work, we introduce a novel approach that leverages much stronger resonant tunneling enhancement achieved by multiplemetallic quantum wells, which has enabled the internal quantum efficiency to reach similar to 1 and photon-emission power to reach similar to 0.8 mu W/mu m(2). Furthermore, this method is applicable with different electronic lifetimes ranging from 10 fs to 100 fs simultaneously, bringing practical implementation of IET-based sources one step closer to reality.

Automated summary

Tunnel nanojunctions based on inelastic electron tunneling (IET) have been proposed as breakthroughs for ultra-fast integrated light sources, but the weak photon-emission power and limited efficiency due to elastic tunneling have hindered their practical applications. Resonant tunneling has been suggested as a solution, but the contradiction between high photon-emission efficiency and power has remained unsatisfactory. This work introduces a novel approach using multiple metallic quantum wells to achieve stronger resonant tunneling enhancement, enabling the internal quantum efficiency to reach approximately 1 and photon-emission power to reach approximately 0.8 μW/μm², bringing practical implementation of IET-based sources one step closer to reality.