Excitation of tunable plasmons in silicon using microwave transmission through a metallic aperture

Abstract

Plasmon resonances in semiconductors at microwave frequencies offer the possibility for many functionalities and integration schemes. Semiconductor materials, such as germanium, gallium arsenide, and silicon, have the further advantage of being able to be integrated with standard electronics technology. Here, we probe the bulk plasmon modes in silicon in the vicinity of a copper plate perforated by a single aperture at frequencies between 10 and 60 GHz. Sharp transmission minima are observed at discrete frequencies. The observed frequencies depend on the size of the aperture and the carrier concentration in the silicon; they are well reproduced by the dispersion relation for bulk plasmons. Our results show that one can excite plasmons in silicon in the millimeter-wave region, opening a route to microwave plasmonics for large-scale applications, using low-cost technology.