Abstract
We demonstrate a novel route to achieving highly efficient and strongly confined spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) waveguides at subwavelength scale enabled by planar staggered plasmonic waveguides (PSPWs). The structure of these new waveguides consists of an ultrathin metallic strip with periodic subwavelength staggered double groove arrays supported by a flexible dielectric substrate, leading to unique staggered EM coupling and waveguiding phenomenon. The spoof SPP propagation properties, including dispersion relations and near field distributions, are numerically investigated. Furthermore, broadband coplanar waveguide (CPW) to planar staggered plasmonic waveguide (PSPW) transitions are designed to achieve smooth momentum matching and highly efficient spoof SPP mode conversion. By applying these transitions, a CPW-PSPW-CPW structure is designed, fabricated and measured to verify the PSPW’s propagation performance at microwave frequencies. The investigation results show the proposed PSPWs have excellent performance of deep subwavelength spoof SPPs confinement, long propagation length and low bend loss, as well as great design flexibility to engineer the propagation properties by adjusting their geometry dimensions and material parameters. Our work opens up a new avenue for development of various advanced planar integrated plasmonic devices and circuits in microwave and terahertz regimes.
Highlights
In the last few years, in order to achieve strong subwavelength confinement waveguiding in microwave regime, the concept of spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) has been proposed to resemble the SPP behaviors at optical frequencies[11]
As a novel class of planar plasmonic waveguides for broadband and low loss spoof SPP propagation, periodic subwavelength corrugated ultrathin metallic strips have received extensive attention[26,27,28,29]
The proposed planar staggered plasmonic waveguides (PSPWs) consists of an ultrathin metallic strip perforated by periodic subwavelength staggered double groove arrays on both sides printed on a flexible dielectric substrate
Summary
In the last few years, in order to achieve strong subwavelength confinement waveguiding in microwave regime, the concept of spoof SPPs has been proposed to resemble the SPP behaviors at optical frequencies[11].
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