Hybrid Dielectric-loaded Nanoridge Plasmonic Waveguide for Low-Loss Light Transmission at the Subwavelength Scale

Abstract

The emerging development of the hybrid plasmonic waveguide has recently received significant attention owing to its remarkable capability of enabling subwavelength field confinement and great transmission distance. Here we report a guiding approach that integrates hybrid plasmon polariton with dielectric-loaded plasmonic waveguiding. By introducing a deep-subwavelength dielectric ridge between a dielectric slab and a metallic substrate, a hybrid dielectric-loaded nanoridge plasmonic waveguide is formed. The waveguide features lower propagation loss than its conventional hybrid waveguiding counterpart, while maintaining strong optical confinement at telecommunication wavelengths. Through systematic structural parameter tuning, we realize an efficient balance between confinement and attenuation of the fundamental hybrid mode, and we demonstrate the tolerance of its properties despite fabrication imperfections. Furthermore, we show that the waveguide concept can be extended to other metal/dielectric composites as well, including metal-insulator-metal and insulator-metal-insulator configurations. Our hybrid dielectric-loaded nanoridge plasmonic platform may serve as a fundamental building block for various functional photonic components and be used in applications such as sensing, nanofocusing, and nanolasing.

Investigation of 3D Dirac semimetal supported terahertz dielectric-loaded plasmonic waveguides

“…Caused by the collective oscillation of electrons, surface plasmons (SPs) propagate along the interface between the metal and dielectrics, which can be utilized to manipulate light on the sub-wavelength structure beyond the diffraction limit. The common SPs waveguides include metal wire structures, metaldielectrics-metal, channel waveguide structures, and hybrid plasmonic structures [8,9], which offer a compromise between a long propagation length and good confinement [10][11][12][13]. By depositing a dielectric stripe on the metal substrate, the dielectric-loaded surface plasmonic (DLSPs) structure is a typical hybrid waveguide and indicates the advantages of strong optical field confinement capability and low dissipation [14][15][16].…”

Hybridized Radial and Edge Coupled 3D Plasmon Modes in Self‐Assembled Graphene Nanocylinders

“…The strongly confined, high‐enhancement, propagating edge modes are particularly attractive for the development of graphene‐based optoelectronic devices including plasmonic waveguides to achieve exceptional propagation lengths and figure of merit. [ 32–34 ] The completely curved nanocylinder does not show propagating edge modes along the length of the cylinder. Thus, supporting the conclusion that these modes in the 1% gap nanocylinders are purely longitudinal edge modes.…”

Suppressed Transmission of Long-Range Surface Plasmon Polariton by TE-Induced Edge Plasmon

“…SPPs are regarded as promising information carriers for the next generation of integrated circuits because a broad range of mode sizes can be realized through waveguide configurations [9][10][11] or phase control [12,13], and it can be detected on-chip directly, by electrical means [14,15] and by out-coupled (far-field) optical detection. The quantum properties of a photon-pair, including entanglement, can be preserved even in the conversion of photons into SPPs (photon-SPP), and vice versa (SPP-photon) [16,17].…”