Femtosecond Thermal and Nonthermal Hot Electron Tunneling Inside a Photoexcited Tunnel Junction.

ABSTRACT: Efficient operation of electronic nanodevices at ultrafast speeds requires understanding and control of the currents generated by femtosecond bursts of light. Ultrafast laser-induced currents in metallic nanojunctions can originate from photoassisted hot electron tunneling or lightwave-induced tunneling. Both processes can drive localized photocurrents inside a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) on femto- to attosecond time scales, enabling ultrafast STM with atomic spatial resolution. Femtosecond laser excitation of a metallic nanojunction, however, also leads to the formation of a transient thermalized electron distribution, but the tunneling of thermalized hot electrons on time scales faster than electron-lattice equilibration is not well understood. Here, we investigate ultrafast elec

SUBMITTER: Martin Sabanes N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9527804 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature