Enhancement of light emission from metal-insulator-metal tunnel junctions

Abstract
Light emission from metal‐insulator‐metal tunnel junctions is enhanced using two schemes for improving photon‐surface plasmo coupling. Results reported here establish that the light emission arises from radiative decay of junction surface plasmon modes excited by inelastic electron tunneling. The enhanced light‐emitting tunnel junctions have an external quantum efficiency in the 10−5 range.