Hybrid plasmonic waveguide for low-loss lightwave guiding

Abstract

A hybrid plasmonic waveguide structure is proposed and fabricated for low-loss lightwave guiding along a metal stripe core. By embedding Au stripe in dual slab waveguides with high refractive-index contrast, the field of the guided mode is confined more in the two dielectric core layers. Thus, the propagation loss is significantly reduced. The guided mode is like a combination of a fundamental long-range surface plasmon polariton strip mode and a dual symmetric dielectric slab mode. We fabricate 5 nm-thick Au stripe optical waveguides and measure the optical properties at a wavelength of 1.31 mu m. The propagation loss is less than 1.0 dB/cm with the metal stripe width of 1-5 mu m. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America