title: Graphene-coated tapered nanowire infrared probe: a comparison with metal-coated probes.
abstract: We propose in this paper a graphene-coated tapered nanowire probe providing strong field enhancement in the infrared regimes. The analytical field distributions and characteristic equation of the supported surface plasmons mode are derived. Based on the adiabatic approximation, analytic methods are adopted in the investigation of field enhancement along the tapered region and show well consistence with the rigorous numerical simulations. Both the numerical and analytical results have shown that the graphene-coated nanowire probe could achieve an order of magnitude larger field enhancement than the metal-coated probes. The proposed probe may have promising applications for single molecule detection, measurement and nano-manipulation techniques.
authors.forename: Bofeng
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Guobin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: Yixiao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Yudong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lian
authors.forename: Shuisheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jian