Asymmetric hybrid plasmonic waveguides with centimeter-scale propagation length under subwavelength confinement for photonic components

Abstract

An asymmetric hybrid plasmonic metal-wire waveguide is proposed by combining the advantages of symmetric and hybrid plasmonic modes. The idea of asymmetric structure eliminates the adverse effect of a substrate and enhances the optical performance of the waveguide. The guiding properties of the proposed waveguide are intensively investigated using the finite elements method. The results exhibit a quite long propagation length of 2.69 cm with subwavelength confinement. More importantly, an extremely large figure of merit of 139037 is achieved. Furthermore, the proposed waveguides can be used as directional couplers. They can achieve a coupling length of only 1.01 μm at S = 0.1 μm with negligible loss. A strong dependence of coupling length on the operating wavelength makes the proposed waveguide promising for realizing wavelength-selective components at telecommunication wavelengths.

Optics of colloidal quantum-confined CdSe nanoscrolls

“…Currently, various hybrid nanostructures and materials are used to design solar cells [1 - 3], nanolasers [4 - 6], photonic switches [7,8], optical tweezers [9] and sensors [10 - 11]. Composite materials are applied in optical nanowaveguides with metal coating [12 - 15], hybrid plasmonic waveguides [16,17], and tapered metal-coated near-field optical probes with dielectric [18 - 22] and semiconductor [23 - 26] cores, which make it possible to form nanoscalelocalised light fields.…”

Plasmonic circular resonators for refractive index sensors and filters

“…SPs are optically induced oscillations of the free electrons at the surface of a metal and can confine and propagate electromagnetic energy far beyond the diffraction limit for electromagnetic waves in dielectric media [ 1 , 2 ]. This could lead to miniaturized photonic components with dimensions scale much smaller than those currently achieved [ 3 , 4 ], such as plasmonic waveguides [ 5 - 8 ] and plasmonic nanolasers [ 9 , 10 ]. Due to the susceptibility of SPs to surrounding dielectric, SPs and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) exhibit excellent properties for sensing applications [ 11 - 13 ].…”

Plasmon‐Enhanced Sensing: Current Status and Prospects

“…The coherent free electron excitations (i.e., surface plasmon resonances, SPRs) which exist at the metal/dielectric interfaces are normally generated by illuminating light to metallic or metallic-dielectric hybrid structures. As yet, various plasmon-assisted optical components have been conceived and experimentally demonstrated, including waveguides [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], photon sorters [20][21][22], absorbers [23][24][25], color filters [26][27][28], and switches [29,30]. SPR based optical sensors are another important research field since they have found numerous useful applications in detecting and characterizing chemical and biological molecules.…”