Open Access
8 October 2020 Mode coupling enhancement from dielectric to plasmonic waveguides
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Abstract

Efficient dielectric–plasmonic interconnect is significant in the design of future electronic–photonic integrated circuits that deal with large data transfer. We propose three designs and analysis of small-footprint couplers that are located at the interface between dielectric and plasmonic waveguides. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed couplers outperform all the works reported in the literature in several aspects including size and coupling efficiency (CE). Our results indicate that the optimum dimensions of the proposed couplers are determined based on whether the coupler is located in the metal side or dielectric side, or the coupler extends equally in both types of materials. The proposed couplers work over a broad frequency range achieving a CE above 88% at the optical communications wavelength 1550 nm. In addition, our results indicate that the CE can be further increased to above 93% by increasing the width of the dielectric waveguide before it is connected to the coupler. Moreover, our proposed designs provide a considerable alignment tolerance, which is needed when aligning the dielectric waveguide to the metal–dielectric–metal waveguide. Our proposed couplers have an impact on the design and miniaturization of nanoscale all-optical devices.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Rami A. Wahsheh "Mode coupling enhancement from dielectric to plasmonic waveguides," Optical Engineering 59(10), 107101 (8 October 2020). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.59.10.107101
Received: 13 July 2020; Accepted: 23 September 2020; Published: 8 October 2020
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CITATIONS
Cited by 4 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Waveguides

Dielectrics

Silicon

Silver

Plasmonic waveguides

Interfaces

Metals

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