Radiation guiding with surface plasmon polaritons

Han, Zhanghua; Bozhevolnyi, Sergey I.

doi:10.1088/0034-4885/76/1/016402

Cited by 291 publications

(224 citation statements)

References 190 publications

(337 reference statements)

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“…All of these waveguides can confine electromagnetic energy tightly near the interface, beyond the diffraction limit of light. 18 In this review, we only focus on one-dimensional structures, as they are necessary for the integration of a plasmonic circuit. Figure 1 shows four types of typical plasmonic waveguides that can support the long-distance propagation of SPPs.…”

Section: Spp Waveguidesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanoplasmonic waveguides: towards applications in integrated nanophotonic circuits

2015

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The properties of propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) along one-dimensional metal structures have been investigated for more than 10 years and are now well understood. Because of the high confinement of electromagnetic energy, propagating SPPs have been considered to represent one of the best potential ways to construct next-generation circuits that use light to overcome the speed limit of electronics. Many basic plasmonic components have already been developed. In this review, researches on plasmonic waveguides are reviewed from the perspective of plasmonic circuits. Several circuit components are constructed to demonstrate the basic function of an optical digital circuit. In the end of this review, a prototype for an SPP-based nanochip is proposed, and the problems associated with building such plasmonic circuits are discussed. A plasmonic chip that can be practically applied is expected to become available in the near future. Keywords: nanophotonics; plasmonic chip; plasmonic circuit; surface plasmons; waveguide INTRODUCTIONThe technologies of semiconductor integrated circuits and modern electronic integrated devices are rapidly approaching their fundamental limits in terms of both speed and data transmission rate (DTR).1 One of the promising solutions to these problems is using light rather than electrons in the functional processing components.2 However, the feasibility of fabricating nanoscale photonic devices may be limited because the diffraction limit of light is dominant when the size of a photonic device is close to or smaller than the wavelength of light in the material. Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), electromagnetic waves coupled to charge oscillation at the metal dielectric interface, can circumvent the diffraction limit and achieve localisation of electromagnetic energy in nanoscale regions that are considerably smaller than the wavelengths of light in the material. 3 The electromagnetic field perpendicular to the interface between metal and dielectric decays exponentially with distance from the metal surface while maintaining the long-range propagation of electromagnetic energy along the surface. This essential feature of SPPs can enable the fabrication of photonic components and optical signal processing devices at the sub-wavelength scale.Surface plasmons (SPs) include the localised type (localised surface plasmons, LSPs) and propagating type (propagating surface plasmon polaritons, PSPPs). For the purpose of optical signal transportation and nanophotonic circuits, only PSPPs will be considered in this review, and they are referred to as SPPs hereafter. Because of the unique properties of tightly confined SPPs on metal structures, various types of metallic nanostructures, such as nanoparticle chains, 4-7 thin metal films, 8 metal slits, 9 grooves, 10 chemically synthesised metal nanowires (NWs)

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Section: Spp Waveguidesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanoplasmonic waveguides: towards applications in integrated nanophotonic circuits

2015

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“…Such a nanospaser will be especially important for future optoelectronic processors. It will serve as an optical source for SPPwaveguide [22,23] interconnects between transistors, which will eliminate delays and heat production related to the capacitive charging/recharging of the electric interconnects and increase the processing rate to ∼ 100 GHz transistor-limited speed. In perspective, the nanospaser can also replace the transistor as the logic active element, which will potentially bring about all-optical information processing to ∼ 10 − 100 THz spaser-limited speed.…”

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confidence: 99%

Electric Spaser in the Extreme Quantum Limit

Stockman

2013

Phys. Rev. Lett.

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We consider theoretically the spaser excited electrically via a nanowire with ballistic quantum conductance. We show that in the extreme quantum regime, i.e., for a single conductance-quantum nanowire, the spaser with the core made of common plasmonic metals, such as silver and gold, is fundamentally possible. For ballistic nanowires with multiple-quanta or non-quantized conductance, the performance of the spaser is enhanced in comparison with the extreme quantum limit. The electrically-pumped spaser is promising as an optical source, nanoamplifier, and digital logic device for optoelectronic information processing with speed ∼ 100 GHz to ∼ 100 THz. Active or gain nanoplasmonics was introduced [1] by spaser (surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). The spaser is a nanoscale quantum generator and ultrafast nanoamplifier of coherent localized optical fields [1][2][3][4][5]. The spaser is a nanosystem constituted by a plasmonic metal and a gain medium. The spaser is based on compensation of optical losses in metals by gain in the active medium (nanoshell) overlapping with the surface plasmon (SP) eigenmodes of the metal plasmonic nanosystem. There are many experimentally observed and investigated spasers where the gain medium consisted of dye molecules [6][7][8], unstructured semiconductor nanostructures and nanoparticles [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], or quantum-confined semiconductor heterostructures: quantum dots (QDs) [19,20], quantum wires (QWs), or quantum wells [21].Classified by mode confinement, there are the spasers with one-dimensional [9,11,13], two-dimensional [10], or three-dimensional (3d) confinement [6,7,18]. The spasers can also be classified by the spasing-eigenmode type, which can be either localized surface plasmons (SPs) [6,7,14,18], or surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) [22,23] as in the rest of the cases. Among the observed spasers, most are with optical pumping, including all the spasers with the strong 3d confinement [6,7,14,18]. Only few SPP spasers, whose confinement and losses are not strong, are with electric pumping [9,11,13].There have been doubts expressed in the literature regarding viability of the nanospaser with the strong 3d confinement [24], especially with electrical pumping [25]. In a direct contrast, the possibility of the optically pumped strongly 3d-confined spaser has been both theoretically shown [1,3,26,27] and experimentally demonstrated [6,7,14,18]. Here we theoretically establish that the electrically-pumped spaser is fundamentally possible. A principal difference of our theory from the previous works [24,25] is that we consider ballistic, quantum electron transport instead of classical, dissipative one. Another important difference is that the contradicting theoretical work [24,25] on spasers (sometimes also called plasmonic nanolasers) has ignored distinction between the threshold condition of spasing and the condition of developed spasing with N n ∼ 1 quanta (SPs) per generating mode. While for macroscopic lasers with enormousl...

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“…Research into SPPs has burgeoned in the last 16 years, driven largely by the emergence of methods for nanoscale structuring of metals [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Although strictly a quantum quasi-particle composed of coherent charge oscillations, plasmons can be described classically using Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, which predicts the presence of propagating electromagnetic waves trapped at the interface between a dielectric and a metal ( Figure 2).…”

Section: A Brief Overview Of Surface Plasmonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasmonic circuits for manipulating optical information

2016

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Surface plasmons excited by light in metal structures provide a means for manipulating optical energy at the nanoscale. Plasmons are associated with the collective oscillations of conduction electrons in metals and play a role intermediate between photonics and electronics. As such, plasmonic devices have been created that mimic photonic waveguides as well as electrical circuits operating at optical frequencies. We review the plasmon technologies and circuits proposed, modeled, and demonstrated over the past decade that have potential applications in optical computing and optical information processing.

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Radiation guiding with surface plasmon polaritons

Cited by 291 publications

References 190 publications

Nanoplasmonic waveguides: towards applications in integrated nanophotonic circuits

Nanoplasmonic waveguides: towards applications in integrated nanophotonic circuits

Electric Spaser in the Extreme Quantum Limit

Plasmonic circuits for manipulating optical information

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