Investigation of an absorption plasmonic electro-optical modulator based on the free carrier dispersion effect in the aluminum doped zinc oxide layer

Abstract

A plasmonic electro-optical modulator, which is based on the free carrier dispersion effect, has been introduced here. The structure of the proposed modulator is a substrate of fused silica/gold/aluminum doped zinc oxide/hafnium dioxide/gold/air. The free carrier dispersion effect occurs in the aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) layer. As the electrical permittivity of the AZO layer is near zero (the epsilon near zero effect) at a wavelength of 1.55 μm, the amplitude of an electrical field is high in this layer, therefore, the modulator is highly sensitive to the varying refractive index of this layer. By applying a voltage to two gold layers, the electrical charge density changes in the AZO layer. Therefore, the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index have been changed, which led to a change in the absorption of the modulator. In order to obtain the charge density distribution in the AZO layer, the Poisson equation is solved by using the finite difference method. To investigate modulator absorption, the Nelder-Mead method is implemented in order to solve the dispersion equation numerically. Finally, the magnetic field, the electric field, and the time average of the Poynting vector have been given by using the least squares approximation method.