Efficient unidirectional nanoslit couplers for surface plasmons
By F. López-Tejeira, S. G. Rodrigo, Luis Martin-Moreno, F. García-Vidal, É. Devaux, T. Ebbesen, J. Krenn, I. Radko, Sergey I. Bozhevolnyi, M. González and 2 more. 2007
489 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The emerging field of plasmonics is based on exploiting the coupling between light and collective electronic excitations within conducting materials known as surface plasmons. Because the so-called surface plasmon polariton (SPP) modes that arise from this coupling are not constrained by the optical diffraction limit, it is hoped that they could enable the construction of ultracompact optical components1,2. But in order that such potential can be realized, it is vital that the relatively poor light–SPP coupling be improved. This is made worse by the fact that the incident light that is conventionally used to launch SPPs in a metal film 3,4,5,6 is a significant source of noise, unless directed away from a region of interest, which then decreases the signal and increases the system’s size. Back-side illumination of subwavelength apertures in optically thick metal films7,8,9,10,11,12,13 eliminates this problem but does not ensure a unique propagation direction for the SPP. We propose a novel back-side slit-illumination method that incorporates a periodic array of grooves carved into the front side of a thick metal film. Bragg reflection enhances the propagation of SPPs away from the array, enabling them to be unidirectionally launched from, and focused to, a localized point.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d359846e7235ebc1f5e73a9a2332257fc1abae8c
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In Biomedical Engineering
In Electrical and Electronic Engineering
In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Citations in the corpus
- Enhancement of light extraction from light emitting diodes (2011, background): “However, recovering of the energy transferred to the SP modes as light is possible by providing the surface roughness or nanostructuring [576,303], for example, metal nanoparticles coupled to a flat metal layer [578,632], a system of unidirectional nanoslits [633,634], annular apertures in the metal”
- Small-divergence semiconductor lasers by plasmonic collimation (2008, background): “To ensure this, the distance d 1 between the slit and the closest groove on the substrate side of the facet must be adjusted to maximize the destructive interference between the reflected SPs from the grating and the SPs that are emerging from the slit and propagating towards the top electrical c”