SOI (silicon-on-insulator)-compatible hybrid nanoplasmonics: waveguiding, polarization-handling, and thermal-tuning

Abstract

This paper gives a review for our recent progress on SOI (Silicon-on-insulator)-compatible hybrid nanoplasmonic waveguides which enables a nano-scale light confinement as well as relatively long-distance guided-wave propagation. The strong polarization dependence of silicon hybrid nanoplasmonic waveguides makes it promising to realize on-chip polarization-handling devices with utlrasmall footprints, which is also summarized. Finally, energyefficient thermal-tuning is presented as an example to show the potential of using silicon hybrid nanoplasmonic waveguides as a promising platform to transfer and process both photonic and electronic signals along the same integrated circuit.

Utilization of Field Enhancement in Plasmonic Waveguides for Subwavelength Light-Guiding, Polarization Handling, Heating, and Optical Sensing

“…For silicon hybrid plasmonic waveguides, not only the modal effective index (including the real part as well as the imaginary part) but also the modal field profiles are strongly polarization-sensitive. From the comparison between the polarization dependences of the silicon hybrid plasmonic waveguide and an SOI nanowire [ 89 ], it can be seen that these two types of waveguides have similar field profiles for TE polarization mode because the plasmonic effect exists for TM polarization only. In contrast, the field profiles for their TM polarization modes are very different due to the surface plasmonic effect.…”