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Electrifying surface plasmonic optical nanocircuits
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Seo, Min-Kyo Huang, Kevin Brongersma, Mark L. |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | Rapid advancements in electronic integrated circuits have brought about a revolution in information processing and management. Many of the significant improvements in computer systems and information technology have been achieved by miniaturizing the elements of electronic integrated circuits. However, the high-density integration of such circuits requires electric signal pathways to be tightly packed on a chip, which leads to a bottleneck in data communication between the circuit elements. In the same way that optical fibers have replaced electrical copper cables for long-distance communications, optical interconnects—with their superior power efficiency and high bandwidth—could replace electrical ones, thereby providing potential solutions to interconnect problems. Optical interconnections must reach an energy consumption of <10fJ/bit and a modulation speed of over a few tens of GHz before they can represent a viable alternative to their electrical counterparts.1 For on-chip or chip-to-chip level interconnections, the fundamental law of diffraction places a limit on the size of optical and optoelectronic devices. Surface plasmons (collective charge oscillations) at the metal-dielectric interface can break the diffraction limit and enable the manipulation of light within nanoscale optoelectronic structures that are similar in size to state-of-theart electronic devices,2 at the speed of photonic devices.3 Passive nanocircuit elements based on surface plasmon slot waveguides have been demonstrated for routing, splitting, and manipulating optical signals at a length scale much smaller than the free-space wavelength of light.4 A logical next step would be the realization of electrically-driven surface plasmon sources and the seamless integration of such sources with optical nanocircuits based on subwavelength surface plasmonic waveguides. Various low-threshold nanolasers have been recently demonstrated.5, 6 However, in the realization of power-efficient, electrically-driven sources for subwavelength optoelectronic Figure 1. Schematic of the electrically-driven optical nanocircuit based on surface plasmonic slot waveguide components, including T-splitters and slot antennas, overlaid on top of the device scanning electron microscope (SEM) image. (Figure modified from Reference 9.) |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.spie.org/documents/Newsroom/Imported/005469/005469_10.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1117/2.1201406.005469 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
