ABSTRACT
The effect of Coulomb blockade, which allows for the control of single electron, is a superlative property of the single-electron transistors. The history of studying the Coulomb blockade mediated quantum tunneling provided the fundamental insights into solutions for the conventional silicon devices and the future nanoelectronic circuits. This chapter investigates the Coulomb blockade effects in a plasmonic gap structure. Since the plasmonic resonance is very sensitive to the local carrier density in the gap, the threshold behavior can be attributed to the onset of quantum tunneling and Coulomb blockade. The “turning on” of electron transport in the plasmonic structure due to the Coulomb blockade and its impact on the plasmonic resonance are observed in the numerical model. For example, the tiny capacitance of a Coulomb blockade plasmonic switch with subnanometer tunnel junction demonstrates the potential of the nanodevice for highspeed switching.
