Coherent Multiphoton Photoelectron Emission from Single Au Nanorods: The Critical Role of Plasmonic Electric Near-Field Enhancement

Electron emission from individual Au nanorods deposited on indium–tin–oxide (ITO) following excitation with femtosecond laser pulses near the rod longitudinal plasmon resonance is studied via scanning photoionization microscopy. The measured electron signal is observed to strongly depend on the excitation laser polarization and wavelength. Correlated secondary electron microscopy (SEM) and dark-field microscopy (DFM) studies of the same nanorods unambiguously confirm that maximum electron emission results from (i) laser polarization aligned with the rod long axis and (ii) laser wavelength resonant with the localized surface plasmon resonance. The experimental results are in good agreement with quantitative predictions for a coherent multiphoton photoelectric effect, which is identified as the predominant electron emission mechanism for metal nanoparticles under employed excitation conditions. According to this mechanism, the multiphoton photoemission rate is increased by over 10 orders of magnitude in the vicinity of a localized surface plasmon resonance, due to enhancement of the incident electromagnetic field in the particle near-field. These findings identify multiphoton photoemission as an extremely sensitive metric of local electric fields (i.e., “hot spots”) in plasmonic nanoparticles/structures that can potentially be exploited for direct quantitation of local electric field enhancement factors.