Abstract
An active metal strip hybrid plasmonic waveguide (MSHPW) using gain materials as loss compensation is proposed with an extremely simple fabrication procedure. Gain materials are introduced either in the low-index layer or in the high-index layer of MSHPW. The effects of waveguide dimensions and material gain coefficients on loss compensation are analyzed at the communication wavelength. For one configuration presented here, a critical material gain as low as 3.8cm(-1) is sufficient for fully compensation of the loss when using a high-index gain material. The active MSHPW with low critical material gain opens up opportunities for practical plasmonic devices in active applications such as amplifiers, sources, and modulators.
Highlights
Plasmonics is drawing increased attention due to its outstanding capability of confining and controlling light beyond the diffraction limit [1], thereby potentially enabling devices integration in nanoscale [2,3,4]
Active plasmonic devices are of critical significance for future integrated plasmonic device technology, and it is beneficial to make active devices based on hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) whose intrinsic modal loss is low
In this paper we propose and analyze an active metal strip hybrid plasmonic waveguide (MSHPW) with gain materials in different regions
Summary
Plasmonics is drawing increased attention due to its outstanding capability of confining and controlling light beyond the diffraction limit [1], thereby potentially enabling devices integration in nanoscale [2,3,4]. A typical challenge for plasmonic waveguides is the trade-off between propagation loss and field confinement. A new type of plasmonic waveguide called “hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW)” was proposed to attempt both low propagation loss and strong field confinement [9,10,11,12,13,14]. Active plasmonic devices are of critical significance for future integrated plasmonic device technology, and it is beneficial to make active devices based on HPW whose intrinsic modal loss is low. In this paper we propose and analyze an active metal strip hybrid plasmonic waveguide (MSHPW) with gain materials in different regions. Compared to the previous work, MSHPW is suitable to introduce gain materials for active applications due to its extremely simple fabrication procedure and low intrinsic modal loss. Our simulation indicates that the critical material gain to fully compensate the loss in MSHPW is so small that it can be obtained by current gain materials
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