Abstract
We report aluminum based structures for manipulation of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation at short wavelength range. Our simulation shows that aluminum is a good metal to excite and propagate SPPs with blue light and that the SPP wavelength can be reduced from about 465 nm to about 265 nm by monitoring the thickness of a coated Si(3)N(4) layer above the aluminum film. It is also shown that the damping becomes more significant with the increase of the thickness of the Si(3)N(4) layer. We also experimentally demonstrated the SPP wavelength tuning effect for 20nm Si(3)N(4) layer covered Al, which can be explained by the variation of effective permittivity. The proposed Metal-Insulator-Air (MIA) structures with SPP wavelength tuning ability have potential applications in 2D optics.
Highlights
Confining light into a deep subwavelength scale has made surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) attractive to the fields of modern optics, in metamaterial studies [1,2,3,4,5], superresolution imaging [6,7,8], optical trapping [9, 10], and transformation plasmonics [11, 12]
SPPs play an important role in the area of sub-wavelength optics and 2D optics [16, 17]
Aluminium is often proposed as an alternative material for plasmonics due to its lower damping constant in the UV and visible range, with the disadvantage of oxidation [18]
Summary
Confining light into a deep subwavelength scale has made surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) attractive to the fields of modern optics, in metamaterial studies [1,2,3,4,5], superresolution imaging [6,7,8], optical trapping [9, 10], and transformation plasmonics [11, 12]. The widely used noble metals, e.g., gold and silver, generally do not perform well in the short visible wavelength as compared to longer visible and infrared wavelength. This is mainly attributed to the interband transitions in the visible spectrum, which gives higher damping constant. For this reason, aluminium is often proposed as an alternative material for plasmonics due to its lower damping constant in the UV and visible range, with the disadvantage of oxidation [18]. The Si3N4 layer in the Al/Si3N4/air structures is found capable of modifing SPP wavelength and loss in addition to preventin native oxidation of aluminum
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