Manipulation of light in MIM plasmonic waveguide systems

Abstract

Plasmonic waveguides that allow deeply subwavelength confinement of light provide an effective platform for the design of ultracompact photonic devices. As an important plasmonic waveguide, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure supports the propagation of light in the nanoscale regime at the visible and near-infrared ranges. Here, we focus on our work in MIM plasmonic waveguide devices for manipulating light, and review some of the recent development of this topic. We introduce MIM plasmonic wavelength filtering and demultiplexing devices, and present the electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT)-like and Fano resonance effects in MIM waveguide systems. The slow-light and rainbow trapping effects are demonstrated theoretically. These results pave a way toward dynamic control of the special and useful optical responses, which actualize some new plasmonic waveguide-integrated devices such as nanoscale filters, demultiplexers, sensors, slow light waveguides, and buffers. for SPP propagation. The unique features of MIM waveguides can be utilized to realize nanoscale photonic functionality and circuitry [11]. In this review, we mainly focus on our research about the manipulating properties in the MIM plasmonic waveguides. Due to the limit of this small topic, an amount of research in the plasmonic field will be omitted, for example, the important applications of SPPs for the enhancement of nonlinear effects [12], beam focusing [13,14], polarization analyzer [15], optical amplifier [16], and so on. We review some recent development of MIM plasmonic waveguide devices. Especially, plasmonic wavelength filtering and demultiplexing have been introduced. The analogue of electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT) and Fano resonances and their applications are presented in the MIM plasmonic waveguide systems. The slow light and rainbow trapping in the MIM waveguides are demonstrated. These results may provide some useful information for attracting researchers' interests in further investigation of the control of light and its applications in the plasmonic waveguides.

An Ultra-Wideband Band Pass Filter using Metal Insulator Metal Waveguide for Nanoscale Applications

“…A concurrent dual band BPF is designed using slot waveguides and the performance is carried out at the resonant frequencies of 1300nm and 1600nm respectively in [17]. A tunable stepped impedance ring resonator for dual band BPF is designed and analysed at O and L bands in [18]. However, most of the investigations are carried out in single-, dual-and triple-band of operation for BPF.…”

Metal-Insulator-Metal Waveguide-Based Racetrack Integrated Circular Cavity for Refractive Index Sensing Application

“…The MIM WG structure is dominant and offers several extraordinary attributes, for instance, stronger light confinement, smaller mode size, minimal bending loss and less costly production expense which has revitalized the implementation of wide-ranging plasmonic devices based on such WG arrangement. Lately, numerous types of MIM WG structure-based plasmonic components are anticipated, for instance, optical filters [10,11], optical power splitters [12,13], light manipulation [14], and sensing devices [15][16][17][18], and others.…”

Multiple-Mode Bowtie Cavities for Refractive Index and Glucose Sensors Working in Visible and Near-Infrared Wavelength Range

“…Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are electromagnetic (EM) wave coupled to the collective oscillations of free electrons on the metal surface and propagate between the metal-dielectric interface [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Plasmonic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide, one of the SPPs waveguide schemes, has received fascinated attentions because of its attractive features, such as bonding strongly localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR), overcoming diffraction limit in conventional optics, low propagation loss, simple manufacturing steps, and compatible integration optics circuits (IOCs) [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Therefore, a variety of functional plasmonic components utilizing MIM waveguides have been designed experimentally and demonstrated theoretically, such as sensors [16], all-optical switches [17], splitters [18], modulators [19], demultiplexers [20], filters [21], interferometers [22], etc.…”

“…Plasmonic metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide, one of the SPPs waveguide schemes, has received fascinated attentions because of its attractive features, such as bonding strongly localized surface plasmon resonance (SPR), overcoming diffraction limit in conventional optics, low propagation loss, simple manufacturing steps, and compatible integration optics circuits (IOCs) [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Therefore, a variety of functional plasmonic components utilizing MIM waveguides have been designed experimentally and demonstrated theoretically, such as sensors [16], all-optical switches [17], splitters [18], modulators [19], demultiplexers [20], filters [21], interferometers [22], etc. A plasmonic MIM waveguide consists of the cavities (i.e., resonators) and the bus waveguides [7,11,17,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”

“…Therefore, a variety of functional plasmonic components utilizing MIM waveguides have been designed experimentally and demonstrated theoretically, such as sensors [16], all-optical switches [17], splitters [18], modulators [19], demultiplexers [20], filters [21], interferometers [22], etc. A plasmonic MIM waveguide consists of the cavities (i.e., resonators) and the bus waveguides [7,11,17,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. The MIM waveguides' cavities greatly impact the SPPs modes and resonance conditions because they can support an excellent mechanism for achieving wavelength and sensing selective.…”