Hybrid plasmonic components based on silicon nanowire platform

CMOS compatible photonic integrated circuits have gained great attentions in short haul interconnects applications because of the promises to tackle the issues of traditional copper interconnects. Towards the monolithic integration of electronics and photonics, lots of efforts have been made to decrease the device footprint by using surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), in order to enhance performances and decrease power consumption. With current metals, this is, however, only true for single or few cascaded devices. This situation can be mitigated by hybridizing SPPs with dielectric modes; hybrid plasmonic waveguides based on silicon platform can provide an alternative to exploit the advantages of both plasmonics and silicon. This paper presents several examples of design, fabrication and characterization of hybrid plasmonic functional components based on silicon nanowire platform, including hybrid plasmonic directional couplers, polarization beam splitters, disks and rings with submicron radii. A proposal of electro-optic polymer modulator based on hybrid plasmonic ring resonator is also discussed. The presented components provide alternative perspectives of novel devices which may be useful in future inter- and intra-core communication systems.