A Hybrid Plasmonic Modulator Based on Graphene on Channel Plasmonic Polariton Waveguide

A hybrid plasmonic modulator based on graphene on channel plasmonic polariton waveguide was proposed to overcome the difficulty in achieving high-speed modulation on the nanometric plasmonic waveguide platform. The extinction ratio and the figure of merit of the proposed modulator were analyzed in detail, and a tradeoff between them was found due to the intrinsic loss of the channel plasmonic polariton waveguide. And an optimized hybrid plasmonic modulator with large modulation bandwidth of 0.662 THz, low power consumption of 118.7 fJ/bit, and short device length of 7.680 μm was obtained theoretically. In addition, the proposed hybrid plasmonic modulator based on graphene on channel plasmonic polariton waveguide is easy to fabricate and provides a potential solution for the high-speed plasmonic modulator.

     

Polarization-Controlled Tunable Multi-focal Plasmonic Lens

A polarization-controlled tunable plasmonic lens which can generate different multi-focal combinations with exciting sources of left and right circular polarizations is proposed in this paper. Both position and intensity of each focal point can be adjusted by modulating the structure of the plasmonic lens. It is believed that the polarization-controlled tunable plasmonic multi-focal lens can be potentially used for optical switches and multi-channel couplers in future logic photonic and plasmonic systems.     

Low Loss Plasmonic Bragg Gratings with a Trench Plasmonic Waveguide

Plasmonics - We designed plasmonic Bragg gratings based on a plasmonic trench waveguide and calculated the characteristics of the designed structure. Conventional plasmonic Bragg gratings are...     

Plasmonic Lens Based on Rectangular Holes

A compact plasmonic lens is proposed in this paper. This plasmonic lens consists of rectangular holes etched on the silver film and arranged on one straight line and possesses the characteristics of short focus length, ultrathin thickness, and strong focus ability. The theoretical design for the plasmonic lens abides by the constructive interference theorem, and the surface plasmon polaritons excited by the holes with linearly polarized light illumination focuses effectively. The plasmonic lenses with single and double focus spots are provided, and the simulation experiment gives the powerful verification. The distinct structure feature and the excellent focusing characteristic of this plasmonic lens are benefit for its applications in optical integration.     

Reversed Hyperbolic Plasmonic Responses in Phosphorene Under Uniaxial Strain

In this paper, hyperbolic plasmonic responses of phosphorene under uniaxial strains have been explored within density functional theory. In the hyperbolic regime, plasmonic slab waveguide modes are found only along armchair direction. Then, uniaxial strains up to 10% have been applied along zigzag and armchair directions, which can significantly modify its plasmonic responses. Under appropriate strain, the signs of permittivities along two in-plane directions can be even reversed, causing switching of the propagating direction of the plasmonic modes into zigzag direction. Our investigations may give a general idea about how to control the hyperbolic plasmonic modes in phosphorene via strain.

     

Nanoscale Surface Plasmon All-Optical Diode Based on Plasmonic Slot Waveguides

A nanoscale surface plasmon all-optical diode is proposed based on a plasmonic slot waveguide having an asymmetric plasmonic grating in the center. The asymmetric configuration of the plasmonic grating and the unique dispersion relations of the plasmonic slot waveguide ensure the nonreciprocal transmission properties. High transmittance contrast ratio of 1,150 is achieved theoretically. The performance of the surface plasmon all-optical diode does not have any high power requirement. This may open a new way for the study of integrated photonic devices based on surface plasmons.     

Investigation of Physical Limits of Plasmonic Focusing Lens in Different Regions

We present theoretical studies of three regions for plasmonic focusing, which are surface plasmon-dominating, Fresnel, and Fraunhoffer regions. The boundaries of the three regions are defined and the physical behaviors of plasmonic lenses in terms of focal length and focus size in these regions are investigated. A plasmonic lens that renders a subdiffraction-limit focus in the Fresnel region is presented and the lens performance with respect to the design parameters is studied by using finite-difference time-domain simulations. This work can serve as a basis for understanding plasmonic-focusing phenomenon and designing plasmonic lenses for various applications.     

Simulation and Analytical Study of Optical Complex Field in Nano-corral Slits Plasmonic Lens

Although spiral plasmonic lens has been proposed as circular polarization analyzer, there is no such plasmonic nanostructure available for linear polarization. In the current work, we have designed nano-corral slits (NCS) plasmonic lens, which focuses the x- and y-polarized light into spatially distinguished plasmonic fields. We have calculated analytically and numerically the electric field intensity and phase of the emission from nano-corral slits plasmonic lens with different pitch lengths under various polarizations of the illumination. It has been shown that one can control the wave front of the output beam of these plasmonic lenses by manipulating the illumination of both circular and linear polarization. Our theoretical study in correlation with FDTD simulation has shown that NCS plasmonic lens with pitch length equal to λ_spp produces scalar vortex beam having optical complex fields with helical wave front and optical singularity at the center under circular polarization of light. When NCS lens (pitch = λ_spp) is illuminated with linearly polarized light, it exhibits binary distribution of phase with same electric field intensity around the center. However, with pitch length of 0.5λ_spp, NCS shows linear dichroism under linearly polarized illumination unlike spiral plasmonic lens (SPL) eliminating the use of circularly polarized light. Optical complex fields produced by these NCS plasmonic lenses may find applications for faster quantum computing, data storage, and telecommunications.

     

Multiple-Wavelength Focusing and Demultiplexing Plasmonic Lens Based on Asymmetric Nanoslit Arrays

A multiple-wavelength focusing and demultiplexing plasmonic lens based on asymmetric nanoslit arrays is designed. The nanoslit arrays are perforated in a gold film and act as metal–insulator–metal plasmonic waveguides. By manipulating the widths of the slit arrays, the plasmonic lens can concentrate two incident plane wave beams to two separated focal points corresponding to their wavelengths. The full wave simulation is performed to verify the designed lens. This work provides a way to design more compact and integrated wavelength-division multiplexing plasmonic devices for nanophotonic communication and spectral imaging.     

Plasmonic Optical Trapping in Biologically Relevant Media

We present plasmonic optical trapping of micron-sized particles in biologically relevant buffer media with varying ionic strength. The media consist of 3 cell-growth solutions and 2 buffers and are specifically chosen due to their widespread use and applicability to breast-cancer and angiogenesis studies. High-precision rheological measurements on the buffer media reveal that, in all cases excluding the 8.0 pH Stain medium, the fluids exhibit Newtonian behavior, thereby enabling straightforward measurements of optical trap stiffness from power-spectral particle displacement data. Using stiffness as a trapping performance metric, we find that for all media under consideration the plasmonic nanotweezers generate optical forces 3–4x a conventional optical trap. Further, plasmonic trap stiffness values are comparable to those of an identical water-only system, indicating that the performance of a plasmonic nanotweezer is not degraded by the biological media. These results pave the way for future biological applications utilizing plasmonic optical traps.     

All-Optical Plasmonic Switches Based on Coupled Nano-disk Cavity Structures Containing Nonlinear Material

All-optical plasmonic switches based on a novel coupled nano-disk cavity configuration containing nonlinear material are proposed and numerically investigated. The finite difference time domain simulation results reveal that the single-disk plasmonic structure can operate as an “on–off” switch with the presence/absence of pumping light. We also demonstrate that the proposed T-shaped plasmonic structure with two disk cavities can switch signal light from one port to another under an optical pumping light, functioning as a bidirectional switch. The proposed nano-disk cavity plasmonic switches have many advantages such as compact size, requirement of low pumping light intensity, and ultra-fast switching time at a femto-second scale, which are promising for future integrated plasmonic devices for applications such as communications, signal processing, and sensing.     

Plasmonic Wood for High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation

Plasmonic metal nanoparticles are a category of plasmonic materials that can efficiently convert light into heat under illumination, which can be applied in the field of solar steam generation. Here, this study designs a novel type of plasmonic material, which is made by uniformly decorating fine metal nanoparticles into the 3D mesoporous matrix of natural wood (plasmonic wood). The plasmonic wood exhibits high light absorption ability (≈99%) over a broad wavelength range from 200 to 2500 nm due to the plasmonic effect of metal nanoparticles and the waveguide effect of microchannels in the wood matrix. The 3D mesoporous wood with numerous low‐tortuosity microchannels and nanochannels can transport water up from the bottom of the device effectively due to the capillary effect. As a result, the 3D aligned porous architecture can achieve a high solar conversion efficiency of 85% under ten‐sun illumination (10 kW m^?2). The plasmonic wood also exhibits superior stability for solar steam generation, without any degradation after being evaluated for 144 h. Its high conversion efficiency and excellent cycling stability demonstrate the potential of newly developed plasmonic wood to solar energy‐based water desalination.     

Graphene-Based Plasmonic Sensor at THz Frequency with Photonic Spin Hall Effect Assisted by Magneto-optic Phenomenon

Plasmonics - Graphene monolayer of sub-nanometer thickness shows strong metallic and plasmonic behavior in terahertz (THz) frequency range. This plasmonic effect varies considerably when graphene...     

Ultrasmall Plasmonic Cavity for Chemical Sensing

We propose an ultrasmall plasmonic cavity based on the channel waveguides for chemical sensing. The plasmonic mode gap due to cutoff angular frequency enables strong optical confinement in a subwavelength volume and suppression of radiation loss. Due to strong field overlap of the surface plasmon polariton mode with environmental material, large sensitivity (1,100 nm/refractive index unit) and a high figure of merit (330) are achieved in the plasmonic cavity with a small physical size of 600?×?800?×?2,500 nm having a telecommunication resonant wavelength. This plasmonic cavity can introduce a broad range of applications including biochemical sensing and strong light–matter interactions.     

Enhanced Optical Absorption and Spectral Photocurrent in a-Si:H by Single- and Double-Layer Silver Plasmonic Interfaces

Single and double plasmonic interfaces consisting of silver nanoparticles embedded in media with different dielectric constants including SiO₂, SiN_x, and Al:ZnO have been fabricated by a self-assembled dewetting technique and integrated to amorphous silicon films. Single plasmonic interfaces exhibit plasmonic resonances whose frequency is red-shifted with increasing particle size and with the thickness of a dielectric spacer layer. Double plasmonic interfaces consisting of two different particle sizes exhibit resonances consisting of double minima in the transmittance spectra. The optical extinction of a-Si:H deposited on these interfaces is broadened into the red indicating higher absorption and/or scattering at wavelengths higher than those typically absorbed by a-Si:H without plasmonic interfaces. While the photocurrent shows an overall decrease for the samples with the interfaces, significant enhancement of photocurrent is observed near the low-energy edge of the bandgap (600–700 nm). These results correlate well with the broadened extinction spectra of the interfaces and are interpreted in terms of enhanced absorption in that region.     

Controlled In Situ Seed-Mediated Growth of Gold and Silver Nanoparticles on an Optical Fiber Platform for Plasmonic Sensing Applications

Plasmonics - This study presents an in situ growth technique to develop highly sensitive plasmonic fiber optic sensors with an excellent control over the plasmonic properties of gold (AuNPs) and...     

An Integrated Multistage Nanofocusing System

We demonstrate an integrated multistage nanofocusing system which combines a conventional objective, a surface plasmonic lens, and a center-positioned rounded-tip cone nanoparticle. The surface plasmonic lens, fabricated on the cover glass which has been mounted on the biological microscopic objective, is composed of several concentric annular slits for exciting propagating surface plasmonic wave. The rounded-tip cone nanoparticle is for further generating non-propagating localized surface plasmonic wave. It is revealed that the enhancement of the nanoscale optical field can be improved by carefully choosing the appropriate numerical aperture of the objective to match the specific nanostructure of the surface plasmonic lens and choosing the relatively big cone angle of the nanoparticle. The investigation shows that a highly confined electric field as small as 20 nm and an enhancement factor of 5 orders of magnitude can be achieved through this multistage nanofocusing system when the system is illuminated with a uniform radially polarized beam.     

In-Plane Plasmonic Modes in a Quasicrystalline Array of Metal Nanoparticles

We investigated the plasmonic modes in a two-dimensional quasicrystalline array of metal nanoparticles. The polarization of the modes is in the array plane. A simplified eigen-decomposition method is presented with the help of rotational symmetry. Two kinds of anti-phase ring modes with radial and tangential polarizations are of highest spatial localizations among all of plasmonic modes. For the leaky characteristic of the anti-phase ring modes, the highest fidelity mode in the quasicrystalline array is found to be tangential polarized mode, whereas normal-to-plane polarized mode in the circular ring. The leaky characteristics and spatial localizations of other plasmonic modes are also studied, for example, collective vortex mode that may be a candidate to form negative responses in plasmonic device and collective radial mode that may be used to generate light sources with radial polarizations.     

Centrally Symmetric Focusing of Surface Plasmon Polaritons with a Rectangular Holes Arrayed Plasmonic Lens

Plasmonics - Nano rectangular holes etched in a gold thin film are optimized and arrayed to form a plasmonic lens. We demonstrate both theoretically and numerically that the proposed plasmonic lens...     

Portable Capillary Sensor Integrated with Plasmonic Platform for Monitoring Water Pollutants

In this work, a label-free and inexpensive method for the monitoring of water pollutants is demonstrated. We introduce a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) based plasmonic capillary optical biosensor to detect microalgae cells. Here, the plasmonic capillary biosensor was prepared by decorating the inner walls of a glass capillary with gold nanoparticles that were employed for investigations. Since the gold nanoparticle has the potential to sense pollutants in water rapidly with high sensitivity and they are expected to perform a significant role in environmental monitoring. Our proposed plasmonic capillary sensor has a detection limit of 25 algal cells (Chlorella sp. CB4). Furthermore, the plasmonic capillary sensing platform significantly simplifies sensor fabrication and reduces the cost of the device. We believe that the presented plasmonic sensor could stand as a potential candidate for developing a cost-effective, label-free, and rapid sensing platform to detect microalgae pollutants present in the water at very low concentrations.