이중-금속 장거리 표면-플라즈몬 도파로

초록

We propose a novel metal-waveguide structure for sustaining long-range surface-plasmon-polaritons (LRSPP). The LRSPP waveguides are composed basically of two asymmetric metal layers: a very thin, finite-width metal strip on top of a metal slab with a dielectric gap in between them. Mode cut-off of LRSPPs excited on the double-metal waveguides is characterized by consistently investigating their dispersion relations and mode profiles. We also confirm experimentally the existence of low-loss, well-confined LRSPP modes by measuring far-field outputs emerging from an edge of the asymmetric double-metal waveguides. In the experiment, we have fabricated several types of SPP waveguide devices including straight lines, S-bend, and Y-branch consisting of gold strips (20 nm-thick, 5μm-wide). Overall propagation loss of the proposed double-metal waveguides is quite comparable to that of single metal-strip waveguides, in addition the mode sizes can be tuned by increasing the core-insulator gap between the metal layers to get a higher coupling efficiency with a single-mode fiber in telecom wavelength. The proposed LRSPP waveguides may open up realization of SPP-waveguide sensors or nonlinear SPP-devices by replacing the core-insulator with a bio-fluid or a nonlinear medium.

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