Active and Passive Electronic Components
Volume 2007 (2007), Article ID 52461, 7 pages
doi:10.1155/2007/52461
Research Article
Compact Optical Waveguides Based on Hybrid Index and Surface-Plasmon-Polariton Guidance Mechanisms
Department of Microelectronics and Applied Physics, Royal Institute of Technology, Electrum 229, Kista 16440, Sweden
Received 13 October 2007; Accepted 9 November 2007
Recommended by Yalin Lu
Abstract
Surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waveguides made of materials available
in nature have, in general, been found to suffer from very high absorption
loss when light confinement is beyond diffraction limit. In this
paper, the possibility of combining both the conventional
index-guiding and the SPP-guiding mechanisms together into one single
waveguide is being explored. Such waveguides, expectedly, inherent the low-loss feature
of all-dielectric waveguides as well as the superior mode field
confinement possessed by SPP waveguides. By using experimentally ready
materials, it is theoretically shown that compact metallodielectric
waveguides can be designed with a ∼500×500 nm2 core size around the 1550 nm telecommunication wavelength. The examined
waveguides can be interpreted as a gap SPP waveguide with an inner
dielectric core. Compared to pure SPP waveguides, such hybrid
waveguides have a comparable mode field size, but with significantly
lower loss (∼0.05 dB/μm for either quasi-TE or quasi-TM operation). Therefore they can be potentially deployed for a range of
integrated photonic applications.