Letter abstract
Nature Nanotechnology 3, 660 - 665 (2008)
Published online: 5 October 2008 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.281
Subject Category: Photonic structures and devices
Integration of photonic and silver nanowire plasmonic waveguides
Anna L. Pyayt1, Benjamin Wiley2, Younan Xia3, Antao Chen4 & Larry Dalton1,3
Abstract
Future optical data transmission modules will require the integration of more than 10,000 
10,000 input and output channels to increase data transmission rates and capacity. This level of integration, which greatly exceeds that of a conventional diffraction-limited photonic integrated circuit, will require the use of waveguides with a mode confinement below the diffraction limit, and also the integration of these waveguides with diffraction-limited components1, 2. We propose to integrate multiple silver nanowire plasmonic waveguides with polymer optical waveguides for the nanoscale confinement and guiding of light on a chip. In our device, the nanowires lay perpendicular to the polymer waveguide with one end inside the polymer. We theoretically predict and experimentally demonstrate coupling of light into multiple nanowires from the same waveguide, and also demonstrate control over the degree of coupling by changing the light polarization.
- Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA
- Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA
- Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA
- Applied Physics Lab, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA
Correspondence to: Anna L. Pyayt1 e-mail: pyayt@u.washington.edu
