Photoinduced surface plasmon switching at VO₂/Au interface

Abstract

Angle-resolved reflection, light scattering and ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy combined with a surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) resonance technique in attenuated total reflection geometry was used to investigate the light-induced plasmonic switching in a photorefractive VO/Au hybrid structure. Measurements of SPP scattering and reflection shows that the optically-induced formation of metallic state in a vanadium dioxide layer deposited on a gold film significantly alters the electromagnetic field enhancement and SPP propagation length at the VO/Au interface. The ultrafast optical manipulation of SPP resonance is shown on a picosecond timescale. Obtained results demonstrate high potential of photorefractive vanadium oxides as efficient plasmonic modulating materials for ultrafast optoelectronic devices.

Polymorphic gallium for active resonance tuning in photonic nanostructures: from bulk gallium to two-dimensional (2D) gallenene

“…However, VO 2 and GST are inherently plagued by their excessive optical losses. Furthermore, GST materials are not plasmonic, and for plasmon reconfigurability, they are generally coupled to a plasmonic metal such as gold or aluminum [19][20][21]. In the case of VO 2 , only its metallic phase is plasmonic, posing an advantage with respect to the GST family by enabling the modulation of the plasmonic response through its MIT [17,22].…”

Nanoimaging and Nanospectroscopy of Polaritons with Time Resolved s‐SNOM

“…For example, attenuated total reflection (ATR) with dielectric materials is widely used to excite and detect surface polaritons in the far-field experiments. [60][61][62][63][64][65] The nonlinear excitation [66,67] provides momentum from the nonlinear susceptibility of the material. Gratings [5,68,69] can provide multiples of g = 2π/d for the in-plane momentum, where d is the spacing of gratings.…”

Ultrafast Plasmonic Optical Switching Structures and Devices

“…On the basis of the SPP excitation in the gold film using the prism scheme, a layer of VO 2 was produced on the top surface of gold, as shown in Figure 4B, so that optical switching was achieved by strong optical modulation on the SPP at the Au/VO 2 interface, where the signal was detected in the reflection of the probe light beam [9]. The formation of the metallic phase of VO 2 layer under strong optical excitation altered the field enhancement effects and the SPP propagation length at the VO 2 /Au interface, modulating the reflection spectrum around the SPP resonance.…”

“…High response speed, large modulation depth, and broadband acceptability or tunability are always expected for optical switching devices. Metallic nanostructures supply possibilities of ultrafast optical switching performance, where the fs-ps response time scale of surface plasmon resonance is a central mechanism [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Furthermore, incorporating plasmonic nanostructures into periodic photonic devices [16][17][18][19][20] enables amplification of the switching signal based on pure plasmonic spectral modulation, facilitating high-speed, high-efficiency, high signal-to-noise ratio, and low-threshold optical switching devices.…”

“…(B) Optical switch based on the excitation of SPPs at the VO2/Au interface. Reproduced with permission[9]. Copyright © 2018, Optical Society of America.…”