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Triangular metal wedges for subwavelength plasmon-polariton guiding at telecom wavelengths

Alexandra Boltasseva, Valentyn S. Volkov, Rasmus B. Nielsen, Esteban Moreno, Sergio G. Rodrigo, and Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

We report on subwavelength plasmon-polariton guiding by triangular metal wedges at telecom wavelengths. A high-quality fabrication procedure for making gold wedge waveguides, which is also mass-production compatible offering large-scale parallel fabrication of plasmonic components, is developed. Using scanning near-field optical imaging at the wavelengths in the range of 1.43–1.52 µm, we demonstrate low-loss (propagation length ~120 µm) and well-confined (mode width ≅1.3 µm) wedge plasmon-polariton guiding along triangular 6-µm-high and 70.5°-angle gold wedges. Experimental observations are consistent with numerical simulations performed with the multiple multipole and finite difference time domain methods.

©2008 Optical Society of America

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Figures (5)
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Schematic of the fabrication steps: (1) a silicon wafer is covered with a layer of silicon oxide and photoresist, (2) resist is exposed and developed, and the pattern is transferred into the oxide, (3) V-grooves are etches in silicon, (4) gold is deposited after oxide removal, (5) nickel is deposited, (6) silicon substrate is dissolved leaving gold 70.5°-wedges.

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Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Scanning electron microscope image of (a) 8.5-µm-wide, 6-µm-high gold wedge waveguides together with (b,c) close-ups of the fabricated wedges (b - wavy edge at the lower end is due to charging effects). Marks and facet defects are due to rough sawing of the metal.

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Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Pseudo-color (a) topographical and (b, c) near-field optical images taken with the Λ-wedge illuminated with TM-polarized light at λ≅(b) 1440, and (c) 1500 nm (the WPP propagates rightwards). The image size: 32×10 µm2. (d) Cross sections of the topographical (stars) and near-field optical (filled and open circles) images of Fig. 3(a) and 3(c) averaged along 10 lines along the propagation direction or perpendicular to it. The exponential dependence fitted by the least-square method to the signal dependence along the propagation direction is also shown.

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Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Pseudo-color (a) topographical and (b) near-field optical images taken with the Λ-wedge illuminated with TE-polarized light at λ≅(b) 1500 nm (the SPP propagates upwards). The image size: 18×32 µm2. (c) Cross sections of the topographical (stars) and near-field optical (filled circles) images of Fig. 4(a) and 4(b) averaged along 10 lines along the propagation direction or perpendicular to it.

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Fig. 5.
Fig. 5. Transverse electric field of the WPP mode at λ=1.5 µm for the curvature radius r=(a) 10 and (b) 100 nm. (c) Mode size (circles) and propagation length (triangles) of WPP mode as a function of the radius curvature (solid lines represent spline-interpolation).

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