A Roadmap toward the Thematic Design of Plasmonic Field Effect Transistors: Crossing the Milestones

Abstract Recently, nano‐optics have attracted immense interest among researchers for the design of all‐optical devices to fulfill the ongoing demands of sustainable energy. Plasmonics of nanoscale materials can be employed to manipulate, guide, and convert ambient electromagnetic radiation to elevate the present state‐of‐the‐art in energy technology. To meet the clean energy challenges that lie ahead, it is indispensable to imbue preconceived notions of the electromagnetic configurations emerging from a set of physical observables that define the plasmonic states of the nanosystem. In this work, a set of hypothetical two‐dimensional plasmonic lattices formed with periodically interdigitated gold nanorods having different geometries and orientations is used as a top layer to simulate the carrier densities of field effect transistors (FETs) as a function of their near‐field potentials within the limit of classical electromagnetism. Based on these considerations, theoretically, a set of principles for the strategic design of different symmetric motifs is illustrated that can increase the effective path length of carriers through strong electromagnetic field confinement to achieve the desired enhancement of the photocurrent of a FET. In essence, the work demonstrates a protocol to design a plasmonic top layer for the maximization of gain voltage of an FET by manipulating the on‐chip local field through plasmonic coupling, giving a new pathway to designing plasmonic FETs.