Adiabatic nanofocusing in hybrid gap plasmon waveguides on the silicon-on-insulator platform

MP Nielsen, L Lafone, A Rakovich… - Nano …, 2016 - ACS Publications
Nano letters, 2016ACS Publications
We present an experimental demonstration of a new class of hybrid gap plasmon
waveguides on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Created by the hybridization of the
plasmonic mode of a gap in a thin metal sheet and the transverse-electric (TE) photonic
mode of an SOI slab, this waveguide is designed for efficient adiabatic nanofocusing simply
by varying the gap width. For gap widths greater than 100 nm, the mode is primarily photonic
in character and propagation lengths can be many tens of micrometers. For gap widths …
We present an experimental demonstration of a new class of hybrid gap plasmon waveguides on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. Created by the hybridization of the plasmonic mode of a gap in a thin metal sheet and the transverse-electric (TE) photonic mode of an SOI slab, this waveguide is designed for efficient adiabatic nanofocusing simply by varying the gap width. For gap widths greater than 100 nm, the mode is primarily photonic in character and propagation lengths can be many tens of micrometers. For gap widths below 100 nm, the mode becomes plasmonic in character with field confinement predominantly within the gap region and with propagation lengths of a few microns. We estimate the electric field intensity enhancement in hybrid gap plasmon waveguide tapers at 1550 nm by three-photon absorption of selectively deposited CdSe/ZnS quantum dots within the gap. Here, we show electric field intensity enhancements of up to 167 ± 26 for a 24 nm gap, proving the viability of low loss adiabatic nanofocusing on a commercially relevant photonics platform.
ACS Publications