Hybrid surface plasmon modes in metal-clad Si/SiO₂ waveguide for compact integration

Abstract

This paper investigated characteristics of hybrid surface plasmon waveguiding modes in metal-clad Si/SiO₂ waveguide. Mode characteristics are shown to be highly dependent on structure dimensions and polarization states. By controlling the structure dimensions, a compromise between propagation loss and field confinement can be made for the waveguiding modes. Here, the waveguide had been particularly designed to have very low loss, in which power is mainly confined in the high-index Si-core region to propagate. This waveguide showed excellent bending, isolation and coupling properties that is suitable for high-density integrated photonic circuits.

Keywords

waveguides / surface plasmon (SP) / photonic integrated circuits / metal

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61275063), the National Key Scientific Program (No. 2012CB933503), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (No. 2011J06002) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2012121009).

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