Broad-bandgap and low-sidelobe surface plasmon polariton reflector with Bragg-grating-based MIM waveguide

Ultracompact parabolic sidewall-profiled hybrid plasmonic waveguide Bragg grating with optimized spectral properties of long-wavelength passband

An ultracompact hybrid plasmonic waveguide Bragg grating (HPWBG) with improved spectral properties of long-wavelength passband is proposed. A hollow HPW is introduced to suppress the entire loss, and a parabolic profiled sidewall is designed to optimize the spectral properties for specific wave bands. The transfer matrix method and finite element method are combined to ensure the efficiency of numerical research. The results show that the parabolic profile effectively reduces the reflection and strengthens the resonance of the mode in the long-wavelength passband, suppressing the oscillations and realizing significant smoothness and improvement in transmission. The optimized transmittance is greater than 99%, and insertion loss is as low as 0.017 dB. A wide bandgap of 103 nm is also attained. The structure also has a compactness with a length of 3.4 µm and exhibits good tolerance. This work provides a scheme for designing and optimizing wavelength selecting devices and has potential application value in integrated photonic devices.

Multiple-input hybrid plasmonic OR logic gate with a nanostructure

A multiple-input hybrid plasmonic OR logic gate has been constructed, analyzed, and simulated utilizing the finite element method by using the COMSOL software package version 5.5. To realize the suggested three- and four-input hybrid plasmonic OR gate, constructive and destructive interference has been standard among the input ports and control port. The factors used to evaluate the functionality of the nanoscale gate are the contrast ratio, modulation depth (MD), and insertion losses (ILs). In contrast, the optical power ratio at the output port, known as the transmission value (T value), has been measured and used to distinguish between logic 1 (ON-state) and logic 0 (OFF-state). The transmission threshold value in this article was 25%, and the wavelength range considered to display the result was from 1000 to 2000 nm. The three-input hybrid OR gate occupied a size of 500n m×400n m with transmission amplification results from the best T value of 216.5 % with 98.85% as a MD. In comparison, the four-input OR gate comes with a size of 600n m×400n m at the best T value of 301.5%, supported by a 99.33% as the MD. The IL values for the three-input and four-input designs are -4.07 and -5.4d B, respectively. The system resonance wavelength is 1310 nm.

Trends of Biosensing: Plasmonics through Miniaturization and Quantum Sensing

Despite being extremely old concepts, plasmonics and surface plasmon resonance-based biosensors have been increasingly popular in the recent two decades due to the growing interest in nanooptics and are now of relevant significance in regards to applications associated with human health. Plasmonics integration into point-of-care devices for health surveillance has enabled significant levels of sensitivity and limit of detection to be achieved and has encouraged the expansion of the fields of study and market niches devoted to the creation of quick and incredibly sensitive label-free detection. The trend reflects in wearable plasmonic sensor development as well as point-of-care applications for widespread applications, demonstrating the potential impact of the new generation of plasmonic biosensors on human well-being through the concepts of personalized medicine and global health. In this context, the aim here is to discuss the potential, limitations, and opportunities for improvement that have arisen as a result of the integration of plasmonics into microsystems and lab-on-chip over the past five years. Recent applications of plasmonic biosensors in microsystems and sensor performance are analyzed. The final analysis focuses on the integration of microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip with quantum plasmonics technology prospecting it as a promising solution for chemical and biological sensing. Here it is underlined how the research in the field of quantum plasmonic sensing for biological applications has flourished over the past decade with the aim to overcome the limits given by quantum fluctuations and noise. The significant advances in nanophotonics, plasmonics and microsystems used to create increasingly effective biosensors would continue to benefit this field if harnessed properly.

Coupled-resonator-induced plasmonic bandgaps

By drawing an analogy with the conventional photonic crystals, the plasmonic bandgaps have mainly employed the periodic metallic structures, named as plasmonic crystals. However, the sizes of the plasmonic crystals are much larger than the wavelengths, and the large sizes considerably decrease the density of the photonic integration circuits. Here, based on the coupled-resonator effect, the plasmonic bandgaps are experimentally realized in the subwavelength waveguide-resonator structure, which considerably decreases the structure size to subwavelength scales. An analytic model and the phase analysis are established to explain this phenomenon. Both the experiment and simulation show that the plasmonic bandgap structure has large fabrication tolerances (>20%). Instead of the periodic metallic structures in the bulky plasmonic crystals, the utilization of the subwavelength plasmonic waveguide-resonator structure not only significantly shrinks the bandgap structure to be about λ²/13, but also expands the physics of the plasmonic bandgaps. The subwavelength dimension, together with the waveguide configuration and robust realization, makes the bandgap structure easy to be highly integrated on chips.

Design of a compact and high sensitive refractive index sensor base on metal-insulator-metal plasmonic Bragg grating

A nanometric and high sensitive refractive index sensor based on the metal-insulator-metal plasmonic Bragg grating is proposed. The wavelength encoded sensing characteristics of the refractive index sensor were investigated by analyzing its transmission spectrum. The numerical results show that a good linear relationship between the Bragg wavelength and the refractive index of the sensing material can be obtained, which is in accordance with the analytical results very well. A high refractive index sensitivity of 1,488 nm/RIU around Bragg resonance wavelength of 1,550 nm was obtained. Besides, the simulation results show that the sensitivity is depended on the Bragg resonance wavelength and the longer the Bragg resonance wavelength, the higher sensitivity can be obtained. Furthermore, the figure of merit of the refractive index sensor can be greatly increased by introducing a nano-cavity in the proposed plasmonic Bragg grating structure. This work pave the way for high sensitive nanometric refractive index sensor design and application.

Plasmon-induced transparency in metal-insulator-metal waveguide side-coupled with multiple cavities

We have demonstrated the analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in the metal-insulator-metal plasmonic waveguide, which consists of a bus waveguide side-coupled with a series of slot cavities. By finite-difference time-domain simulations, it is found that the resonance wavelength of the slot cavity can be controlled by adjusting the length of the cavity. Moreover, the EIT-like response is strongly dependent on the coupling separation between the corresponding adjacent cavities. Multiple-peak plasmon-induced transparency can be realized by cascading multiple cavities with different lengths and suitable cavity-cavity separations. This ultracompact plasmonic waveguide system may find important applications for multichannel plasmonic filter, nanoscale optical switching, and slow-light devices in highly integrated optical circuits and networks.

Plasmonic spectral splitting in multi-resonator-coupled waveguide systems

Spectral splitting is numerically investigated in a metal-insulator-metal plasmonic waveguide coupled with a series of disk cavities for the first time to our best knowledge. The finite-difference time-domain simulations find that, when an identical cavity is introduced into the single-cavity-coupled structure, a resonance peak emerges in reflection dip due to the plasmonic analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency. By cascading multiple cavities into the waveguide system, the resonance spectra are gradually split because of the phase-coupled effects. Particularly, the quality factors of splitting resonance spectra can be rapidly improved with increasing the number of coupled cavities. The proposed plasmonic systems may find potential applications in highly integrated optical circuits, especially for multichannel filtering, all-optical switching, and slow-light devices.

Slow light engineering in periodic-stub-assisted plasmonic waveguide

We investigate the slow light engineering in periodic-stub-assisted plasmonic waveguide based on transmission line theory. It is found that the dispersion relationship of the proposed waveguide can be easily modified by tuning the stub depth and the period. The theoretical results show that a large normalized delay bandwidth product of 0.65 can be achieved at 1550 nm, meanwhile maintaining the group index of 35. In addition, the proposed waveguide shows "S-shaped" dispersion curve, which implies that the group velocity dispersion parameter at the inflection point equals zero and a dispersion-free slow light waveguide can be realized. Due to the excellent buffering capacity, the proposed compact configuration can find important applications on optical buffers in highly integrated optical circuits.

Optical bistability based on an analog of electromagnetically induced transparency in plasmonic waveguide-coupled resonators

We have investigated numerically an optical bistability effect based on an analog of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a nanoscale plasmonic waveguide-coupled resonator system. The system consists of a metal-insulator-metal waveguide side-coupled with a slot cavity and a nanodisk cavity containing Kerr nonlinear material. By finite-difference time-domain simulations, the EIT-like spectral peak has a redshift with an increase of the dielectric constant of the nanodisk cavity. More importantly, we have achieved an optical bistability with threshold intensity about three times lower than that of recent literature [Appl. Opt.50, 5287 (2011)]. The results show that our plasmonic structure can find more excellent application in highly integrated optical circuits, especially all-optical switching.

Optical bistability in metal-insulator-metal plasmonic waveguide with nanodisk resonator containing Kerr nonlinear medium

We numerically investigate the optical bistability effect in the metal-insulator-metal waveguide with a nanodisk resonator containing a Kerr nonlinear medium. It is found that the increase of the refractive index, which is induced by enhancing the incident intensity, can cause a redshift for the resonance wavelength. The local resonant field excited in the nanodisk cavity can significantly increase the Kerr nonlinear effect. In addition, an obvious bistability loop is observed in the proposed structure. This nonlinear structure can find important applications for all-optical switching in highly integrated optical circuits.

Perfect absorber supported by optical Tamm states in plasmonic waveguide

Based on a two-dimensional plasmonic metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) waveguide with a thin metallic layer and a dielectric photonic crystal in the core, a novel absorber at visual and near-infrared frequencies is presented. The absorber spectra and filed distributions are investigated by the transfer-matrix-method and the finite-difference time-domain method. Numerical results show that attributing to excitation of the optical Tamm states in the MDM waveguide core, the optical wave is trapped in the proposed structure without reflection and transmission, leading to perfect absorption as high as 0.991. The proposed absorber can find useful application in all-optical integrated photonic circuits.

Optical bistability in metal-insulator-metal plasmonic Bragg waveguides with Kerr nonlinear defects

We numerically investigate the characteristics of the defect mode and the nonlinear effect of optical bistability in metal-insulator-metal (MIM) plasmonic Bragg grating waveguides with Kerr nonlinear defects. By means of finite-difference time-domain simulations, we find that the defect mode peak exhibits a blueshift and height-rise by enlarging the width of the defect layer, and it has a redshift and height-fall with the increase of the dielectric constant of defect layer. Obvious optical bistability is obtained in our waveguides with a length of less than 2 μm. The results show that our structure could be applied to the design of all-optical switching in highly integrated optical circuits.

Tunable multi-channel wavelength demultiplexer based on MIM plasmonic nanodisk resonators at telecommunication regime

The tunable multi-channel wavelength demultiplexer (WDM) based on metal-insulator-metal plasmonic nanodisk resonators is designed and numerically investigated by utilizing Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulations. It is found that the channel wavelength of WDM is easily tuned by changing the geometrical parameters of the structure and the material filled in the nanodisk resonator. The multi-channel WDM structure consisting of a plasmonic waveguide and several nanodisk resonators increases the transmission up to 70% at telecommunication regime, which is two times higher than the results reported in a recent literature [Opt. Express 18, 11111 (2010)]. Our WDM can find important potential applications in highly integrated optical circuits.

Tunable band-pass plasmonic waveguide filters with nanodisk resonators

A novel and simple plasmonic filter based on metal-insulator-metal plasmonic waveguides with a nanodisk resonator is proposed and investigated numerically. By the resonant theory of disk-shaped nanocavity, we find that the resonance wavelengths can be easily manipulated by adjusting the radius and refractive index of the nanocavity, which is in good agreement with the results obtained by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. In addition, the bandwidths of resonance spectra are tunable by changing the coupling distance between the nanocavity and waveguides. This result achieved by FDTD simulations can be accurately analyzed by temporal coupled mode theory. Our filters have important potential applications in high-density plasmonic integration circuits.

Color plasmons and trains of plasmons

We show that a broadband surface plasmon can be excited in a thin metal film. A train of two plasmons can be excited at conditions near the condition of broadband surface plasmon excitation. Also, a method for independent multichannel checks of biochips by wavelength addressing is proposed.

Characteristics of plasmonic Bragg reflectors with insulator width modulated in sawtooth profiles

We present a new metal-insulator-metal (MIM)-based plasmonic Bragg reflector (PBR) design that solves the technical problems of conventional step profile MIM PBRs through the use of sawtooth profiles. Our numerical study revealed that the sawtooth PBRs exhibit lower insertion loss, narrower bandgap, and reduced rippling in the transmission spectrum when compared with the step PBRs. The defect mode of the sawtooth PBR also exhibits a higher transmission, narrower linewidth, and higher Q-factor.

Widely tunable electro-optic distributed Bragg reflector in liquid crystal waveguide

We propose and numerically investigate a versatile and easy-to-realize configuration for a guided-wave voltage-tunable distributed feedback grating based on reorientation in nematic liquid crystal and coplanar comb electrodes. The device has a wide tuning range exceeding 100 nm and covers C and L bands for wavelength division multiplexing.