Planar surface plasmonic waveguide devices based on symmetric corrugated thin film structures

Abstract

Recently, a conformal surface plasmon (CSP) structure has been successfully proposed, which is very promising for application of planar plasmonic devices in the frequency ranging from microwave to mid-infrared [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 40-45 (2013)]. Here we investigated the dispersions and electromagnetic (EM) field patterns of a symmetric CSP structure in which the two sides of the planar metal strip are symmetrically corrugated by groove arrays. The symmetric CSP structure can support both the symmetric mode (even mode) and the anti-symmetric mode (odd mode) of surface wave propagation. Based on the even mode, we analyzed the EM wave coupling between two adjacent symmetry CSP strips, and then designed and analyzed two planar CSP waveguide devices in the terahertz frequency: a frequency splitter and a 3 dB directional coupler. To verify the functionality and performance of these waveguide devices, we scaled down the working frequency to microwave and designed similar devices with scaled geometry. We implemented microwave experiments on the fabricated prototypes, and the tested device performances have clearly validated the functionality of our designs. The symmetric CSP structure is believed to be very applicable in future design of novel planar plasmonic device and circuitry.

Endfire Antenna Based on Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons

“…Due to the better characteristics of sspps than a microstrip line, such as low loss, high field confinement, single conductor configuration and the ability to keep signal integrity [2,3], a great number of microwave devices based on sspps have been reported, such as sspps-based filters [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], power splitters [12,13] and antennas [14][15][16][17][18][19][20], which will all make a difference in sspps-based wireless communications and other systems.…”

A new kind of spoof surface plasmon polaritons structure with periodic loading of T-shape grooves

“…from propagation wave to SSPPs and utilizing these ultra-thin plasmonic metamaterial to design plasmonic devices. [15][16][17][18][19][20] However, the studies on improvement of characteristic and enhancement of confinement capacity of SSPPs, which are highly demanded in design of various miniaturized devices and circuitries, have not been paid much attention on. Compare to traditional structures with rectangular grooves or trapezoidal grooves, this proposed structure shows strong confinement of SPPs which means it has less transmission loss of SSPPs and more propagation length.…”

Highly-confined and low-loss spoof surface plasmon polaritons structure with periodic loading of trapezoidal grooves

“…[18][19][20][21][22][23] However, very few works have been executed on characterization and enhancement of confinement capacity of spoof SPPs which are highly demanded in design of various miniaturized devices and circuitries.…”