Tapered Long-Range Surface Plasmon Polariton Waveguides with a Gap.

ABSTRACT

We propose tapered long-range surface plasmon polariton (LR-SPP) waveguides with a gap (tapered G-SPPWs) for improved tunneling efficiency in G-SPPWs. The optical characteristics of the fabricated tapered G-SPPWs were experimentally measured and compared with simulation results. The proposed tapered structure can improve tunneling efficiency by reducing insertion loss of the tapered G-SPPWs. The insertion losses of the straight G-SPPW with an 8-µm gap length and a 2-µm SPPW width and the tapered G-SPPW with an 8-µm gap length, a 2-µm SPPW width, a 6-µm taper width, and a 3-µm taper length were measured to be ~1.03 and ~0.74 dB, respectively. The tapered G-SPPW has potential as an efficient plasmonic modulation device element, offering control of the guided SPP through interaction with an applied force in the gap.