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Engineering the Input Impedance of Optical Nano

Dipole Antennas: Materials, Geometry and
Excitation Effect
F. Pelayo Garca de Arquer, Vladimir Volski, Niels Verellen, Guy A. E. Vandenbosch, and Victor V. Moshchalkov

AbstractAn optical nano dipole antenna is analyzed by means

of its input impedance as well as the matching properties of the
antenna topology and material configuration. A comparison of this
classical microwave driving method with plane wave excitation is
accomplished, contrasting the resonances in the input impedance
and optical cross sections for several setups, and analyzing the
spectral response shape. It is found that for all structures analyzed, a simple linear expression can be defined characterizing the
relation between total dipole length and resonant wavelength. The
fact that this linear relationship remains valid for different excitation models, for most widely used antenna materials (Au, Ag, Cu,
and Al) and even in the presence of substrates is important with
respect to practical designs. To our knowledge, such an extensive
study has not been performed before.
Index TermsOptical dipole antennas, plasmons, resonance,
scattering.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE quest for miniaturization, integration, higher compactness, and speed in circuit devices, is leading towards
ever higher and higher frequency regimes. This trend gave
way from microwave to terahertz, and more lately to optical
frequency regimes. However, metal dispersive properties at
optical frequencies present a new challenge in the electromagnetic modeling of such devices, as a direct scaling from
lower frequency bands is no longer possible and thus a proper
review is required. In these regimes the interaction of free
light with the electron bulk sea in the metals surface gives
Manuscript received July 09, 2010; revised January 19, 2011; accepted
January 31, 2011. Date of publication July 12, 2011; date of current version September 02, 2011. This work was supported in part by the Flemish
government through the Methusalem framework and in part by the Fonds
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen (FWO) through several research
projects.
F. P. G. de Arquer was with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
ESAT-TELEMIC, 3001 Leuven, Belgium. He is now with the Institute
of Photonic Sciences, 08860 Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: pelayo.garciadearquer@icfo.es).
V. Volski, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch are with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, ESAT-TELEMIC, 3001 Leuven, Belgium (e-mail:
vladimir.volski@esat.kuleuven.be; guy.vandenbosch@esat.kuleuven.be).
N. Verellen is with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, ESAT-TELEMIC; Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, Nanoscale Superconductivity and
Magnetism and Pulsed Fields Group; IMEC, 3001, Leuven, Belgium (e-mail:
Niels.Verellen@fys.kuleuven.be).
V. V. Moshchalkov is with the Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry,
Nanoscale Superconductivity and Magnetism and Pulsed Fields Group, 3001
Leuven, Belgium (e-mail: victor.moshchalkov@fys.kuleuven.be).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2161544

rise to a kind of waves named plasmon polaritons. Because of

their subwavelength and non diffraction limited nature [1], [2]
they may play a key role in compact nano circuitry, allowing
the possibility of handling light with structures much smaller
than a wavelength. Since the systems supporting surface
plasmons are also electrical conductors, the integration with
photonic circuitry will be facilitated. This is viewed as a major
breakthrough in electric-photonic nanocircuitry [3][7]. The
necessity of interconnecting all of such circuit constitutive elements implies the analysis of waveguides and antennas, among
others [8][20], resembling the state of the art in microwave
technology decades ago. As an example of the failure in direct
scaling from radio, microwave and terahertz regimes, the
response of these antennas has been reported to considerably
shift to lower frequencies because of the dielectric character of
the metal [21].
The subwavelength focusing properties of surface plasmons,
particularly applied in plasmonic nano dipole and monopole
antennas make them a very productive topic [6][13]. More
complex configurations as Yagi Uda dipole arrangements
[17][19] and bowtie antennas [20] have also been studied. The
strong field enhancement present in the vicinity of the antennas
is also very useful in other areas, such as non linear optics and
biosensing.
Up to now, most research has focused on the scattering
properties of these structures when excited by plane waves or
Gaussian laser beams [9][20]. However, from a circuit point
of view, the parameter to study is the input impedance of the
. The input impedance concept is common
antenna
at microwave and lower frequency regimes, but is quite new in
the study of plasmonics. The first insights in the calculation of
optical input impedance for nano dipole antennas were obtained
by Al et al. in [22], where they analyzed the response and
matching properties of a silver dipole nanoantenna embedded
in vacuum when varying its length and gap material. More
recently, Huang et al. [23] studied the impedance in a circuit
consisting of two gold dipole nano antennas interconnected by
a two wires transmission line, and then obtained the impedance
from the standing wave relation (SWR) taken at a fixed point on
this line. They analyzed also the matching properties varying
antenna width and length. In both of these investigations however finite domain discretization technique solvers were used
and only in the last one the substrate was taken into account.
Because free standing nano structures are extremely difficult
to fabricate, the effect of the substrate on the input impedance

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DE ARQUER et al.: ENGINEERING THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF OPTICAL NANO DIPOLE ANTENNAS

should also be included in further antenna analysis and characterization. In this paper, the input impedance of a gap fed
nano dipole antenna is analyzed for several metal and substrate
materials, in a two semi infinite media environment that models
the effect of the substrate, for varying antenna length and
width. These results are compared with the behavior of radio
frequency (RF) antennas, where the dispersive properties of the
metals are negligible. A linear model of the resonant response
of the antennas is established. This is very useful in designs as
it can take advantage of all the knowledge in antenna theory
acquired at lower frequencies. After this study a comparison
of gap fed excitation with plane wave excitation is performed.
The optical cross sections, corresponding to the plane wave
excitation, are determined. All the calculations were performed
with an in-house developed simulation tool, MAGMAS 3D
[24]. The simulation procedure is based on a combination
of surface and volume integral equations in a multilayered
environment. These equations are solved using the method of
moments (MoM). Surface currents are meshed using rectangles
and triangles and volume currents are meshed using hexahedra.
Additional details about the used techniques can be found in
[25][28].
This tool was originally developed for the microwave regime
and extended considerably to the optical regime [29]. The MoM
technique [30] is known as a very powerful, robust, and fast
technique in classical antenna problems. In the optical domain
however, up to now it has been completely deprecated by the
finite elements method (FEM) or finite-difference time-domain
(FDTD) modeling technique, which is used in most commercial
solvers there. The main intrinsic strength of a MoM solver is the
much lower number of unknowns describing the problem. This
argument actually still holds also in the optical regime, as only
micro/nanostructures need to be discretized.
II. THEORY AND VALIDATION
The first great advantage of the MoM in comparison with the
FEM and the FDTD method is that only the current carrying
components (the dipoles) in Fig. 1 have to be discretized.
The complex environment, which may include multilayered
substrates, is taken into account via Greens functions. The
discretized components are modeled in terms of equivalent
currents. These currents fill completely all metal/dielectric
volumes and the boundary conditions are satisfied in an average
sense inside these volumes, on surfaces or lines depending
on the selected testing procedure. The result is that MoM is
intrinsically faster than the two other methods. The second
advantage of the MoM technique is that, if properly formulated,
it is variationally stable since most of the output parameters
are expressed in integral form over the equivalent currents.
As a consequence even if the calculated currents differ considerably from the exact solution, integral parameters over
both currents may remain very similar. Further, this will be
illustrated by showing that even with a rather rough mesh high
quality physical results may be obtained. A third advantage is
that MoM does not heavily suffer from field singularities near
sharp edges, since they are analytically incorporated inside the

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Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the dipole antenna geometry and dimensions. (b)
Schematic of the excitation setup and input impedance retrieval. An imposed
current (red) is flowing over two passive patches (green) to the two dipole arms.
(c) Plane wave illumination.

Greens functions. For the FEM and the FDTD method special
) should be taken to describe correctly
care (
these field singularities.
The antenna design is based on the work of Muhlschlegel et
al. [12] where the optical response of plasmonic nano antennas
was studied. The geometry and defining parameters are depicted
,
and
.
in Fig. 1(a):
This structure is modeled in MAGMAS sandwiched between
two semi infinite media, one (the bottom) taken as substrate and
the other as vacuum. The dipole arms are meshed with 5 5 8
hexahedrons, which is optimal for this structure and increases also the efficiency of MoM by the use of translation
symmetry.
The extinction cross section of a gold monomer calculated using MAGMAS 3D with different meshes is plotted in
Fig. 2(a). The analysis of these data demonstrates clearly the
stability of the MoM [30]. The results obtained even with a very
rough mesh 6 1 1 (41.7 nm 40 nm 40 nm) provides
already a very good estimation of the antenna resonance properties. The differences in extinction cross section calculated with
the rough and fine meshes are almost negligibly small. On the
adjacent figure Fig. 2(b) extinction cross sections are calculated
using Lumerical [31], a commercial solver based on the FDTD
method. As expected, in general the results obtained with the
FDTD method depend considerably on the chosen mesh. A fine
mesh should be used for reliable calculations of the monomer
resonant wavelength. The calculated wavelengths as a function
of the mesh cell size are plotted in Fig. 3. It should be also noted
that in contrast to Fig. 2(a) (MoM) in Fig. 2(b) (FDTD) not only
peak positions but also their levels depend clearly on the mesh.
However, for both methods shown in Fig. 2, the convergence of
the numerical results is not an ultimate proof of the accuracy.
Comparison with the exact solution or experimental results still
remains a more convincing validation.
As a next step, several gold monomers with different lengths
were fabricated on a glass substrate by means of electron beam
lithography and ion-milling. The fabricated monomers have a
height and width of about 60 nm and 110 nm, respectively. The
maximal lengths of the monomers are 265 nm, 205 nm and
165 nm. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011

Fig. 2. Extinction cross section of a 250 nm 40 nm 40 nm gold monomer

on a substrate with n = 1:5 (a. MAGMAS 3D, b. Lumerical).
Fig. 4. (a) Simulation and measurement of extinction cross section of gold
monomers with different lengths on a 1.5 refractive index glass substrate,
polarization along longitudinal axis (thick lines: measurements, solid lines:
MAGMAS, dashed lines: Lumerical), (b) SEM image of a monomer with
length 265 nm.

Fig. 3. Resonance wavelength of a gold monomer as a function of mesh cell

size.

monomer with length 265 nm is shown in Fig. 4. As a consequence of the fabrication method the side walls of all particles have a slope of about 20 degrees. Extinction cross secwith 2
pitch were meations of arrays of 50 by 50
sured using a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer equipped
with a microscope. They are shown in Fig. 4. The monomers
were illuminated by a plane wave polarized along the longitudinal axis. Considering the fact that the distance between the
dipoles in the array is considerably larger than a wavelength,
in the case of normal incidence the response of a dipole in the
array is almost identical to the response of a single dipole. Regarding the electromagnetic modeling, in the case of Lumerical (FDTD method), the space was meshed in 5 nm side cubes
in a box surrounding the particle. The plane wave excitation
within MAGMAS illuminates the sample from the substrate

side, whereas in Lumerical it is top illuminated. This difference does not affect the obtained cross sections. The MAGMAS
mesh cell size is about 20 nm, i.e., 16 6 3 cells for 265 nm,
10 6 3 cells for 205 nm, and 9 6 3 cells for 165 nm.
The used complex permittivity of gold was taken from [32].
The substrate was modeled with a constant 1.5 refractive index.
In the case of the FDTD method the dielectric response of the
metal was fitted using the multicoefficient model of Lumerical
[31] that indeed offers a good fit to [32] (not shown here). Simulation values for both solvers were normalized and adjusted
to match the experiment. This change of scale does not affect
the interpretation of the results, because the important feature
here is the extinction shape. The agreement between them is evident, although both simulations are red-shifted with respect to
the measurements. These differences are partially due to the fact
that rectangular prisms were used in both simulations resulting
in larger monomer volumes in comparison with their real sizes
in the experiment.
III. GAP EXCITATION
An essential parameter of any receiving or transmitting antenna is its input impedance [33][36]. This parameter is absolutely needed in order to be able to describe the coupling between an antenna and the connected circuits, being part of a
receiver or transmitter, respectively. This is evident at RF and

DE ARQUER et al.: ENGINEERING THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF OPTICAL NANO DIPOLE ANTENNAS

microwave frequencies, but stays valid also at IR and optical

frequencies. There are different techniques to calculate the input
impedance. In general the input impedance can be expressed in
terms of incident and reflected waves, as in [23]. This approach
requires the incorporation of the feeding line in the full wave
calculations, in this way increasing the numerical size of the
problem. However, a well-known simplification is the gap excitation [22]. It is well-known that, despite the absence of the
feeding line in the gap technique, the antenna impedances calculated with both techniques are very similar. This can be explained physically. Since the conductors of the feeding transmission line in normal circumstances are very close to each
other compared to the wavelength, the incident and reflected
waves on the feeding line actually impose a voltage between
the two parts of the antenna connected to the two conductors
of the transmission line. This voltage can be considered a gap
voltage. Since the currents on both conductors of the transmission line are opposite and located extremely close to each other,
they have a negligible effect on the antenna. Omitting them in
the radiation problem by consequence does not introduce large
errors.
The gap excitation can be considered a voltage source. It
thus corresponds to a Thevenin equivalent. In this paper, the
Norton equivalent is used. In order to retrieve the antenna input
impedance the dipole is fed at its gap by imposing a theoretical current flowing through infinitely conducting connections
to the dipole arms. The primary feed used is thus an imposed
current source placed at the top (metal/vacuum) dipole interface covering the gap. This feeding scheme is meshed with 5
nm side square segments (Fig. 1(b)) in such a way that they
are aligned with the dipole arm mesh. No boundary condition
is imposed for this current. Instead, the impedance can be calculated by determining the resulting voltage over the gap. This
way of working is equivalent with taking into account both conduction and displacement current in the impedance calculation.
Only when the dipole is close to one of its natural resonances,
the input impedance demonstrates resonant behavior due to a
very strong response of the dipole to the gap excitation. The
goal of this paper is to provide simple guidelines to estimate the
position of the resonance for different widely used metals in the
optical regime. It should be noted that although the resonance
response is determined mainly by the natural dipole resonances,
the exact resonance position depends slightly on the chosen excitation. Nevertheless qualitative differences in the response between different metals remain the same as demonstrated in this
paper for the gap excitation and plane wave excitation as shown
in Fig. 1(b, c).
, and the metal is chosen among Au,
The substrate is
Ag, Cu, Al and perfect electric conductor (PEC). The complex
permittivity of these materials was modeled with experimental
from [37]. The
data, Au, Ag taken from [32], Cu, Al and
obtained input impedance (resistance
and reactance ) is
depicted in Fig. 5 for varying antenna arm length . For high
off-resonance wavelengths , where the dipole is electrically
) and the resmall, the reactance is largely capacitive (
sistance relatively small when compared to resonance (where
is maximum), independent of the antenna metal used. Depending on feeding line impedance, this may be highly incon-

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venient since it drastically enhances return losses, therefore requiring a large impedance matching network. As the wavelength
gets closer to resonance, the reactance starts to behave induc) and the resistance starts to grow rapidly. The
tively (
crosses zero from negative to positive values
points where
show series LC resonant behavior. For those wavelengths the
input impedance is purely resistive, but still much smaller than
, at what can be seen as a short circuit resonance. For
gold this occurs at approximately 1225 nm for an arm length
, yielding
[Fig. 5(a)(b)]. This is
of
.
one order of magnitude smaller than
This resonance is the counterpart of the well known
for
thin RF dipoles. Going down in wavelength, close to the
maximum resistance resonance, the reactance crosses zero again
and now starts to behave capacitively (parallel LC resonant behavior). In these points the impedance is only resistive but larger
. For the same case
at 920 nm is obthan
tained. For longer wavelengths the reactance remains negative
and the resistance decays until second order resonances appear
at 565 nm). Be(in the same case
cause the resistance peak corresponds to maximum scattering
cross section or, equivalently, radiated power, dipole dimensions (or the working wavelength band) should be chosen as a
trade off between radiation efficiency and impedance matching,
both strongly relying on the feeding line properties [23]. For
other antenna materials the results are qualitatively similar. The
case of silver [Fig. 5(c)(d)] is blueshifted with respect to gold,
and presents also slightly smaller resistance values. For copper
[Fig. 5(e)(f)] the similarities with gold are remarkable. Although resistance values are a little bit higher for the second resonance (about 500 ), resonance positions only differ in a few
nanometers, opening up interesting design choices depending
on the environment. This fact is explained by the almost identical complex permittivity in the analyzed wavelengths for both
materials. The aluminium case [Fig. 5(g)(h)] presents a new
phenomenon with respect to the previous metals. An additional
at around 900
peak appears in the resistance for
nm, and also the reactance is shifted to negative values in a way
different from typical series and parallel LC resonances. This is
explained by the interband transitions that approximately occur
at this wavelength. The resistance is also much smaller, below
at maximum. Note that for all cases the resistance
1.5
and the impedance amplitude show a significant decrease as
dipole arms get shortened. This is caused by the bigger electrical size of the gap for each resonant frequency. The case of
PEC [Fig. 5(i)(j)] serves as a non dispersive reference, thus representing the RF down scaled equivalent. The overall response
is qualitatively similar, but a very clear and important differ) for the real metals
ence is noticed. Resonant positions (
are strongly redshifted with respect to the expected values in
classic antenna theory. The first one is traditionally given by
for thin dipoles. This phenomenon is properly explained by the dispersive properties of the metals at optical frequencies, which introduces an effective wavelength scaling in
the form of (1) [21]
(1)

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Fig. 5. Input impedance as a function of  when varying dipole arm length L in steps of 10 nm for different antenna materials over SiO . W = H = 40 nm and
G = 30 nm are kept constant. Resistance and reactance, respectively, for (a)-(b) Au, (c)-(d) Ag, (e)-(f) Cu, (g)-(h) Al and (i)-(j) PEC. Horizontal semi transparent
planes show zero crosses in reactance.

where
is the plasma wavelength, and both
and
coefficients determining the offset and slope of the linear relation.
correspond to the resonances of the ideal
The values for
non-dispersive PEC case given the same geometry. Apart from
the wavelength shift each material will give rise to different
) in the antenna, that can be qualiOhmic losses (
tatively classified according to the imaginary part of the permit. Although (1)
tivity as
serves as a good description of the wavelength scaling, a more
convenient form is given by (2), linearly relating both total anand the associated resonance with
tenna length
two parameters
(slope) and
(offset) that will depend in each case on the material and geometric properties of
the setup. This formula is easy to use for making a practical design
(2)
Fig. 6 consists of slices of Fig. 5 for specific configurations. As
discussed before, even if there is only one physical resonance,
resonant frequency can be defined in different ways:
1. at zero values of the reactance going from negative to positive (
);

2. at zero values of the reactance going from positive to neg);

ative (
).
3. at the maximum of the real part (
For the topologies depicted there, they are clearly marked on
, square, pentagram
). The
Fig. 6 (diamond
resonant wavelengths are calculated using (2) and Table I.
A comparison of the real part resonance positions among the
different materials is plotted in Fig. 7(a), when varying dipole
arm length. Au antennas present bigger shifts than other materials as predicted in [21] for cylindrical nanorods embedded in a
homogeneous medium. It will be shown however that the shift in
the resonances depends not only on the properties of the materials, but also on the antenna excitation. For gold the resonance
is approximately 330 nm redshifted with respect to PEC, while
silver yields a softer displacement of 280 nm. Table I depicts the
linear fit of the resonance positions as a function of total antenna
for several material configurations. The
length
bigger gold redshift is clearly translated in the offset . The
in the PEC case is further from the value two beslope
cause of the substrate and the non negligible antenna width. For
copper the results are very similar to gold. Aluminium presents
the smallest displacement, only about 110 nm above PEC. Note

DE ARQUER et al.: ENGINEERING THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF OPTICAL NANO DIPOLE ANTENNAS

Fig. 6. Calculated input impedance of the dipole (L = 100 nm, W = H =

40 nm, G = 30 nm) for several antenna materials. (a) real part, (b) imaginary
part.

TABLE I
LINEAR FIT OF INPUT IMPEDANCE RESONANCE POSITIONS FOR SEVERAL
MATERIAL CONFIGURATIONS AS A FUNCTION OF L . W
H
AND

G = 30 nm

= = 40 nm

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Fig. 7. (a) Resonance wavelengths in the input impedance (for maximum R)

for several antenna materials and
substrate: varying L, W
H
L G. (b) Resonance wavelengths in the
,G
.L
input impedance (for maximum R) for Au over
when varying antenna
width W . L
,G
and H
.

40 nm

= 30 nm
= 110 nm

SiO
=2 +
= 30 nm

SiO
= 40 nm

width variation influence is studied for the Au over

configuration fixing all other dimensions and maintaining the initial mesh. Fig. 7(b) shows the relation between the dipole width
and the real part of the impedance resonances. The observed behavior coincides with classic antenna theory, as increasing the
width means a reduction of the effective dipole length because
of the bigger reactance at the rod ends, producing a blue shift of
the resonances.
IV. PLANE WAVE EXCITATION

that second order resonances appear also in the case of Au and

Cu, although they are not studied here.
The effect of considering a substrate with constant refractive
permittivity [37]
index instead of the frequency dependent
for gold as antenna material. The difwas studied with
ferences are not appreciable for
resonances, very slightly
redshifted, at least for the wavelengths under consideration. The

After the gap excitation analysis, the same topology is now

studied when illuminated by a plane wave. The setup of this
configuration in MAGMAS is shown in Fig. 1(c). A plane wave
polarized along the dipole axis impinges the structure from the
substrate at its bottom interface. From the scattered far fields, extinction cross sections are obtained by application of the Optical
Theorem [38]. There is a clear difference between this excitation and the gap feeding. In the latter case, a source of current
was placed in the middle of the dipole, in this way establishing
a connection between them: the two nanorods constituting the
antenna are coupled through the current flowing between them.
The current shows a maximum in the gap and decays up to
the rod ends (not shown here) in a quasi sinusoidal distribution
along the longitudinal direction. With the plane wave excitation
however, the rods are only capacitively coupled, resulting in an
extinction peak considerably redshifted when compared to the
expected longitudinal plasmon band of the individual rods [39],

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011

=15
= 40 nm

= = 40 nm

Fig. 8. Full characterization of the normalized extinction spectra

(a-d) as a function of L and G for Au over a n
: substrate with W H
.
(a) Resonant positions corresponding to maximum extinction cross section, (b) maximum value of normalized extinction, (c) FWHM and (d) normalized extinction
: substrate with H
and G
. The amplitude of
average. (e) Resonant positions and (f) FWHM as a function of L and W for Au over a n
the current distribution jJ j at resonance for the same configuration with W
H
and L
is plotted for several gap sizes: (g) G
, (h)
10 nm and 40 nm.

=15
= = 40 nm
= 110 nm

TABLE II
LINEAR FIT OF EXTINCTION CROSS SECTION RESONANCE WAVELENGTHS FOR
PLANE WAVE ILLUMINATION AS A FUNCTION OF L . W
H
AND
G
. SUBSTRATE WITH REFRACTIVE INDEX n
:

= 30 nm

= = 40 nm
=15

but blue shifted with respect to gap feeding. A huge field enhancement appears now in the vicinity of the gap, where there
is no current flowing at all. Each nanorod indeed presents at
its ends zero current and a maximum value somewhere in the
middle, depending on the relative position and the strength of
the coupling [Fig. 8(g)(i)]. To overcome the mismatch introduced by the gap for the plane wave illumination in the currents
distribution, the use of one equivalent rod without gap was proposed in [21]. However, under this assumption the results are
red-shifted a lot, about 500 nm, compared to the same length
dipole with gap excitation. Resonances corresponding to the extinction peak values are analyzed for Au, Ag and PEC when
varying dipole arm length as it was done for the gap excita, subtion, this time with constant refractive index,
strate (Table II). The same shifts appear because of the material dispersive properties, but the resonant positions are overall

= 10 nm

= 1 nm

blue shifted compared with gap excitation. Differences are evident in the offset of the wavelength-dipole length relation, but
almost negligible for the slopes, where for two significant digits
the only difference appears for the PEC configuration. Far and
near field resonance shifts under plane wave illumination were
also reported in [41], [42] for single cylindrical nanorods but as
a function of their radii.
Now that the comparison of the two excitation methods has
been accomplished, a full analysis of the effect of the gap for
the plane wave excitation is performed. The gap size is crucial since it determines the coupling between the two dipole
arms, in this way affecting the far field response of the structure
and shifting the obtained resonances. Plasmon resonance spec) dependence on coupled nanorod antenna ditral position (
mensions has been studied extensively before [40][42]. However, little attention has been given to the spectral shape, i.e.,
the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of these resonances
[42]. This parameter is of great importance for several applications ranging from localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR)
sensing to plasmonic lasing [43], where high quality resonators
having sharp lineshapes are required. For that reason, in addition
maps [Fig. 8(a) and (e)], for each
to the
and
set a full characterization of the normalized extinc(taken as the extinction cross section divided
tion spectra
by the antenna horizontal area) is given, by means of analyzing
, linewidth
, and
its peak

DE ARQUER et al.: ENGINEERING THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF OPTICAL NANO DIPOLE ANTENNAS

average over value

[Fig. 8(b), (c) and (f) and (d)
respectively].
It is shown that smaller gap sizes imply red-shifted peak positions [Fig. 8(a)], and that the slope of the relation between
this peak and arm length also increases when reducing its size.
For a fixed , the redshift in the resonance as a function of
the gap is not linear, which is more evident for larger values
). It tends asymptotiof (thus for higher aspect ratios
cally to the no-gap resonant wavelength. If is fixed however,
resonant positions behave almost linearly. The peak value of
[Fig. 8(b)] shows a very strong dependence on the gap size
as smaller gaps yield bigger amplitudes. For instance, keeping
,
varies from 1 to 20. In Fig. 8(c) FWHM
space is plotted. Broader peaks appear for
variation in
longer dipoles. The sensitivity to seems to be different depending on the arm length. For
, reducing the gap
no
size increases the width, whereas in the case
clear relation between these two parameters can be observed.
The average of the normalized extinction is shown in Fig. 8(d).
As it happens for the peak value, reducing increases its overall
amplitude. As FWHM reveals the same behavior, this does not
mean that the extinction is more concentrated around a narrower and bigger peak, but that it is broadened, enhanced and
redshifted when reducing the gap size. This behavior reveals a
clear tendency in the extinction parameters to reach the no-gap
is reduced. This can be explained based on the
spectra as
current distribution amplitude over the two individual nanorods,
tending to a sinusoidal shape in the overall structure as the particles get closer.
[Fig. 8(i)] the two particles interact, in this
For
way displacing the maximum current position of the individual
nanorods towards the gap. This is more evident when the two
nanorods get closer [Fig. 8(h) and (g)] and thus couple more
the differences with a single nanorod
strongly. For
of double length are only appreciable in a small region around
the gap, that will eventually vanish in the limit.
The current, i.e., the current density integrated over the dipole
cross section, is shown in Fig. 9 along the length of the dipole.
The behavior of the current around the gap is clearly demonstrated. This confirms our physical expectation looking at the
field distribution that there is a smooth transition between the
monomer and a dipole with a very small gap. The same analysis performed for silver (not shown here) produced similar behavior, although blue shifted because of the different material
dispersive properties.
and length is analyzed
Next, the influence of varying
, fixing
again for a Au antenna over a substrate with
to 10 nm. Fig. 8 depicts the resonance peak position (e) and
FWHM (f) dependence on these parameters. The blue shift ob) for the gap excitation
served in the resonance positions (
with increasing dipole width is also noticed here, in agreement
relation is howwith [21] and [40]. The slope of the
ever not affected by , contrarily to the gap variation. For the
FWHM [Fig. 8(f)], keeping fixed results in a monotonic increasing dependence on . For small aspect ratio antennas the
sensitivity to almost disappears (e.g., the case of
with
). More elongated antennas present a stronger
dependence on that parameter. This is again in agreement with

3151

Fig. 9. The amplitude of the current distribution jJ j along the dipole integrated
over its cross section at resonance for Au over a n
: substrate with W
H
and L
for several gap sizes.

= 40 nm

= 110 nm

=15

classic antenna theory, where a bigger radius yields an enhanced

bandwidth. Here, however, due to the response of metals at optical frequencies, the FWHM is in the first instance determined
by the damping and losses inside the metal, that directly depend on the total volume and the current distribution along the
structure. Since the resonances studied here correspond to the
first sustained mode, that exhibits a quasi-shifted sinusoidal current distribution, the bigger the volume the bigger the losses and
therefore an enhanced bandwidth is obtained. On the other hand
the spectral position of the resonances is mainly determined
by the antenna length, and the remaining parameter that allows
tuning the quality factor is the width . The damping strength
inside the metal also depends on the metal used. Using materials
with lower losses, like Ag, will result in smaller FWHM values.
characterization obIt must be noted that the
tained here, although presenting similar behavior if compared
with the work of Muskens et al. for similar sizes [42], is scaled
down by approximately a factor of two with respect to their results. The reason is that they calculated the cross sections from
a 2D simplification of the antenna structure based on a Greens
function formalism instead of using a full wave 3D electromagnetic solver. This suggests that for nano dipole antennas, where
the aspect ratios are upper-bounded by the considerable value of
due to fabrication issues and due to the fact that cannot be
chosen arbitrarily large in order to keep the dipole resonances
) in the optical regime, the antenna width must be taken
(
into account to accurately characterize the spectral shape.

V. CONCLUSION AND REMARKS

The nano dipole antenna topology was studied with a method
of moments based software tool, comparing gap excitation and
plane wave illumination. To the knowledge of the authors, for
the first time, the input impedance of the antenna was calculated for several material configurations, varying lengths and
widths, and including the substrate effects, this in contrast with
previous work [22]. The calculation of the input impedance for
gap feeding can be used to determine the parameters of the optimal feeding line [23]. It was shown that besides a displacement in the response of the antenna and an increase in the ohmic

3152

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011

losses due to dispersive not PEC materials, the remaining aspects of the behavior are similar to the behavior of classical antennas at microwave and RF frequencies. Transfer of know-how
from these areas is very feasible. A linear relation for the resonances in terms of the antenna length was introduced, as well as
some basic design rules. The effect of the dispersive properties
of some important metals was studied for the input impedance.
Resembling [21], a shift comparison
was observed for gap excitation. Gold produces the bigger
redshift, which is a good characteristic for designing subwavelength structures, but because of its permittivity, also presents
than silver and other metals. Copper
higher absorption and
shows a similar response than gold making both of them particularly suited for red and infrared wavelengths. Silver is less
redshifted but has certain practical issues related to oxidation.
Aluminium is the one closest to the ideal PEC case, although it
presents larger losses. Concerning losses, in the range 5001200
. Therefore, a trade-off among the desired working window, device size, and material characteristics
in each environment must be accomplished in the design and
engineering of the input impedance. The study of plane wave
excitation reveals that the phenomenology of this configuration
is not the same as for gap excitation, where the coupling between dipole arms is conductive instead of capacitive. This difference, in addition to the width influence on the far field, introduces a considerable blue shift in the cross section resonances.
A strong dependence of the scattering properties on antenna gap
and width values was shown under this illumination. The gap
influence on the extinction amplitude and peak position can be
understood in terms of input impedance as an increase and redshift in its values. It was shown that the antenna width is crucial
to accurately determine the values of the cross sections.
Further research, for example using different materials for
the individual nanorods could also introduce interesting properties in the frequency response of the system. Also, radiating
quantum dots can be studied. The intriguing world of nanocircuitry and the engineering of these devices represent an incredible challenge. It is shown that a proper design and the full understanding of each individual block and its connections undeniably requires a thorough study of the antenna input impedance.
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F. Pelayo Garca de Arquer received the M.Sc.
degree in telecom engineering in 2009 from the
Universidad de Oviedo, after doing his Master
Thesis at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on
the topic of Plasmonic Antennas and Scattering
Nanostructures in Prof. Vandenboschs group. He
was awarded a Fundacin la Caixa grant to take the
M.Sc. in photonics at the Universidad Politnica de
Catalunya. In his second Master Thesis, Plasmonically Enhanced Absorption in Metal-Semiconductor
Nanocomposites he worked with Prof. Konstantatos group at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain, where he
is working toward the Ph.D. degree.

Vladimir Volski graduated from the Moscow Power

Engineering Institute, Moscow, Russia, in 1987 and
received the degree of Candidate of Science (Ph.D.)
in 1993.
In 1987, he joined the Antennas and Propagation
of Radio Waves Division, Moscow Power Engineering Institute, as a Researcher. Since January
1996, he has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the
ESAT-TELEMIC Division, Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. His main research interests include electromagnetic theory, computational
electromagnetics, and modeling and measuring of electromagnetic radiation,
including bio-electromagnetics.

Niels Verellen received the B.S. and M.S. degree

in physics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium, in 2005 and 2007, respectively,
where he is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree.
His doctoral work is focused on optical confinement phenomena in plasmonic nanomaterials with
predesigned electromagnetic properties.

3153

Guy A. E. Vandenbosch was born in Sint-Niklaas,

Belgium, on May 4, 1962. He received the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium,
in 1985 and 1991, respectively.
From 1985 to 1991, he was a Research and
Teaching Assistant with the Telecommunications
and Microwaves Section, Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, where he worked on the modeling of
microstrip antennas with the integral equation technique. From 1991 to 1993, he held a postdoctoral
research position at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Since 1993, he has
been a Lecturer, and since 2005, a Full Professor at the same university. He
has taught, or currently teaches, courses on electrical engineering, electronics,
and electrical energy, wireless and mobile communications, part antennas,
digital steer- and measuring techniques in physics, and electromagnetic
compatibility. His research interests are in the area of electromagnetic theory,
computational electromagnetics, planar antennas and circuits, electromagnetic
radiation, electromagnetic compatibility, and bio-electromagnetics. His work
has been published in ca. 120 papers in international journals and has been
presented in ca. 200 papers at international conferences.
Prof. Vandenbosch has convened and chaired numerous sessions at many
conferences. He was Co-Chairman of the European Microwave Week 2004
in Amsterdam, and Chaired the TPC of the European Microwave Conference
within this same Week. He was a member of the TPC of the European Microwave Conference in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. He has been a member
of the Management Committees of the consecutive European COST actions
on antennas since 1993, where he is leading the working group on modeling
and software for antennas. Within the ACE Network of Excellence of the EU
(20042007), he was a member of the Executive Board and coordinated the
activity on the creation of a European antenna software platform. He holds a
certificate of the postacademic course in Electro-Magnetic Compatibility at the
Technical University Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Since 2001, he has been
President of SITEL, the Belgian Society of Engineers in Telecommunication
and Electronics. Since 2008, he is a member of the board of FITCE Belgium,
the Belgian branch of the Federation of Telecommunications Engineers of the
European Union. During 1999 to 2004, he was Vice-Chairman, and from 2005
to 2009, Secretary of the IEEE Benelux Chapter on Antennas and Propagation.
Currently he holds the position of Chairman of this Chapter. From 2002 to
2004, he was Secretary of the IEEE Benelux Chapter on EMC.

Victor Moshchalkov was born in Russia. He received the M.Sc., Ph.D., and Habilitation degrees
in physics from the Lomonosov Moscow State
University, Moscow, Russia, in 1975, 1978, and
1985, respectively.
From 1978 to 1988, he was a Research Physicist,
Assistant Professor, and Professor at the Lomonosov
Moscow State University where, in 1988, he became
Head of the Laboratory of High Temperature Superconductivity. Since 1986, he has held a number
of positions as Guest Scientist or Guest Professor
at Toronto University, Canada, TH Darmstadt, Marburg University, RWTH
Aachen, Germany, Centre dEtudes Nuclaires de Grenoble, France. In 1991,
he joined the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, as a Visiting
Professor and where he became a Full Professor in 1993. He has over 780
publications in international peer reviewed journals and more than 9300
citations.
Prof. Moshchalkov has received several awards: the Young Researcher award
in 1986, the High Education Scientific Prize in 1988, the ISI Thomson Scientific Award Top Cited Paper in Flanders in 2000, the Dr. A.De LeeuwDamry-Bourlart Prize for Exact Sciences from the Flemish FWO in 2005, and
the Methusalem Research Award in 2009. He was a finalist for the EU Descartes
Research Prize in 2006. He is an American Physical Society Fellow since 2007.
He was the Chairman of the ESF Program Vortex Matter in Superconductors-VORTEX from 1999 until 2004. He became the Director of the INPAC
Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry (Center of Excellence at the K.U.
Leuven) in 2005. Since 2007, he is also the Chairman of the ESF-NES program,
which includes 60 teams from 15 European countries. He was an invited speaker
at 96 international conferences and workshops, and he is Founder of the new
series of International Conferences on Vortex Matter in Nanostructured Superconductors. He is a member of the International Advisory Committee of 34
international conferences. He has been, or is, Promoter of 48 Ph.D. theses (12
at the Moscow State University and 36 at the K.U. Leuven).