Horizontal Cu/SiO2/Si/SiO2/Cu plasmonic waveguide components integrated in silicon photonic circuits

We report experimental realization of various Cu/SiO
₂
/Si/SiO
₂
/Cu plasmonic waveguide based building blocks, including low loss (~0.28 dB/Lim) waveguides, low loss (~0.52 dB/turn) bends, power splitters, and Mach-Zehnder interferometers with ER of ~18.7 dB. This is a significant step toward plasmonic nanocircuits on the Si platform.