Abstract
We present characteristics of very thin Au strip waveguides based on
long-range surface plasmon polaritons (LR-SPPs) along thin Au strips embedded
in polymers. We also report a 10 Gbps optical signal transmission via LR-SPPs
with the pig-tailed Au strip waveguide at a telecommunication wavelength of
1.55 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$.
We limited the thickness, width, and length up to $\sim$20nm, $\sim
{\hbox {10}}\ \mu{\hbox {m}}$, and $\sim$5 cm, respectively, for practical applications.
At 1.55 $\mu{\hbox {m}}$,
loss properties of the Au strip waveguides were theoretically and experimentally
evaluated with thickness, width and cladding material. The lowest propagation
loss of $\sim$1.4dB/cm
was experimentally obtained with the 14-nm-thick and 2-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$-wide Au strip. With a single-mode fiber,
the lowest coupling loss of less than 0.1 dB/facet was achieved with the 14-nm-thick
and 7.5-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$-wide
Au strip. The lowest insertion loss was obtained 7.7dB with the 14-nm-thick,
5-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$-wide,
and 1.5-cm-long Au strip. The propagation loss was improved approximately
30% for the 17-nm-thick Au strip with lowering the refractive index of the
cladding polymer by 0.01. In the 10 Gbps optical signal transmission experiment,
the LR-SPP waveguide exhibits an excellent eye opening and a 2.2 dB power
penalty at $10^{-12}$ bit
error rate. These all results indicate that the LR-SPP waveguide is a potential
transmission line for optical interconnects to overcome inherent problems
in electric interconnects.
© 2008 IEEE
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