Abstract
Electronic interconnections restrict the operating speed of microelectronic chips as semiconductor devices shrink. As surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves are localized, signal delay and crosstalk may be reduced by the use of optical interconnections based on SPP waves. With this motivation, time-domain Maxwell equations were numerically solved to investigate the transport of information by an amplitude-modulated carrier SPP wave guided by a planar silicon/silver interface in the near-infrared spectral regime. The critical-point model was used for the permittivity of silicon and the Drude model for that of silver. The signal can travel long distances without significant loss of fidelity, as quantified by the Pearson and concordance correlation coefficients. The signal is partially reflected and partially transmitted without significant loss of fidelity, when silicon is terminated by air; however, no transmission occurs when silicon is terminated by silver. The fidelity of the transmitted signal in the forward direction rises when both silicon and silver are terminated by air. Thus, signals can possibly be transferred by SPP waves over several tens of micrometers in microelectronic chips.
Highlights
Devices in a circuit must be interconnected, so faster interconnections will definitely speed up microelectronic chips
While this analysis is suitable for optical-sensing applications, it is unwieldy for signals that must be transported by SPP waves in optical interconnections
We undertook a foundational investigation and solved the Maxwell equations in the time domain to investigate the transport of information by a carrier SPP wave guided by a planar silicon/silver interface
Summary
Information transfer by the carrier SPP wave was determined for three different materials occupying the subdomain C:. The frequency-domain relative permittivity of silicon is described by the critical-point model as[20,21] ε Si(ω). The frequency-domain relative permittivity of bulk silver is described by the Drude model as[22,23] ε Ag(ω). The inverse Fourier transform yields the time-domain relative permittivity of bulk silver as εAg(t) ωA2gτAg 1. The amplitude of the electric field of the carrier SPP wave on the plane x = −a is modulated by the pulse function g(t) = ωct exp(−ωct),. Is the complex wavenumber describing the propagation and attenuation of the carrier SPP wave along the silicon/ silver interface[10,11,12]; and the complex wavenumbers αcSi = kc2ε Si(ωc) − qc[2].
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