Tunability of hybridized plasmonic waveguide mediated by surface plasmon polaritons

Abstract

Hybrid plasmonic waveguides have achieved rapid advancement in plasmonics, which has given rise to remarkable field enhancement, light harvest, light-transport capabilities, bridging the gap between electronics and photonics by routing and manipulating light at sub-wavelength regions and so on. However, the development of plasmonic waveguides is hindered by lack of devices that can adjust coherent plasmonic fields. In this letter, hybridized planar multilayer insulator metal insulator metal insulator heterostructures are proposed, and it is demonstrated that their unique capabilities can be used to adjust the mode characteristics by means of varying the thickness of the insulator spacer layer inserted between two metal films, such as the shift of the surface plasmon resonance wavelength. This type of hybrid plasmonic waveguides opens up opportunities for the tunability of mode characteristics, adjustment of resonant energy transfer processes, that have a potential for designing novel optical micro/nano resonance cavities.