Development of active surface plasmonic polariton waveguide

活性表面等离子体极化波导的研制

• 批准号: 227582-2013
• 负责人: Li, Xun
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: McMaster University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=524024
• 关键词: Development; active; surface; plasmonic; polariton

Conventional photonic or optoelectronic components are designed to deal with the optical wave directly. These components need a featured size in thousands of wavelength (i.e., in a range from 100micron to 1mm) in order to sufficiently amplify or manipulate the optical wave. Therefore, a chip in a typical size of several centimeters cannot have many such components integrated. The surface plasmonic polariton (SPP) wave, appearing as a resonance between the electromagnetic field and free electrons at a dielectric and conductor interface, can be tightly confined in a tiny cross-sectional area beyond the diffraction limit and can propagate at a much slower speed as compared to the optical wave, which means the SPP wave has a much shorter equivalent wavelength and the SPP device will only need a greatly reduced size for the same function. As such, we can build integrated SPP devices with greatly increased density to fulfill complex functions that will be impossible for conventional integrated photonic or optoelectronic devices in areas like optical communication and optical signal processing. We can also expect a greatly enhanced performance or even new functions on solitary SPP devices due to the largely extended interaction time of the SPP wave with its guiding medium and the greatly intensified nonlinear effect. The propagation loss in current SPP waveguides, however, sets a major limit to their applications. Our proposed active SPP waveguide in this research program is aimed to realize the guidance, amplification, and control of the SPP wave simultaneously. If successful, it will overcome the major obstacle in the exploration of the SPP wave. Consequently, a whole family of devices and their integrations can be developed ranging from the generation, amplification, modulation, transmission, and control of the SPP wave at the optical frequency. Hence it will have a significant impact on the development of advanced components for optical communication networks, sensor systems, and signal processing systems. The structure and device invented and knowledge acquired through this research program may also benefit other researchers in this field and a number of Canadian companies.

常规的光子或光电组件旨在直接处理光波。这些组件需要在数千个波长（即，从100毫米至1mm）中的特征大小，以充分放大或操纵光波。因此，典型大小的芯片数量不可能集成许多此类组件。 The surface plasmonic polariton (SPP) wave, appearing as a resonance between the electromagnetic field and free electrons at a dielectric and conductor interface, can be tightly confined in a tiny cross-sectional area beyond the diffraction limit and can propagate at a much slower speed as compared to the optical wave, which means the SPP wave has a much shorter equivalent wavelength and the SPP device will only need a greatly reduced size for相同的功能。因此，我们可以构建具有大大增加密度的集成SPP设备，以实现复杂的功能，对于传统的集成光子或光电设备，在光学通信和光学信号处理等领域，这是不可能的。我们还可以期望由于其指导介质的SPP波的很大程度上扩展的相互作用时间，并且具有大大加强的非线性效应，因此在孤立SPP设备上的性能甚至新功能都大大提高。但是，当前SPP波导中的传播损失为其应用设定了主要限制。我们提出的该研究计划中提出的主动SPP波导旨在同时实现SPP波的指导，放大和控制。如果成功，它将克服探索spp浪潮的主要障碍。因此，可以开发整个设备及其集成的家族，从光频率下的SPP波的生成，放大，调制，传输和控制。因此，它将对光学通信网络，传感器系统和信号处理系统的高级组件的开发产生重大影响。通过该研究计划获得的结构和设备也可能使该领域的其他研究人员和许多加拿大公司受益。