title: Optical nanofocusing by tapering coupled photonic-plasmonic waveguides.
abstract: We have numerically designed a compact structure to concentrate optical waves from a silicon-on-insulator waveguide to a deep sub-wavelength and high intensity surface plasmon focal spot at the tip of a metallic strip taper. A systematic design approach is developed to obtain an optimal photon-surface plasmon side coupling efficiency of up to 50% at 1.55 μm wavelength, and an over 50 times increase in electric field intensity in a focal region of around 20nm × 20nm × 7nm in size. The length of the whole device is 2.2 μm. We expect fabrication of the proposed device to be simpler than devices in previous work.
authors: University of Michigan- Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, National Key Laboratory of Nano/Micro Fabrication Technology, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
authors: Xiaolong
authors: X
authors: He
authors: Liu
authors: L
authors: Yang
authors: Tian
authors: T
authors: Yang
mesh_terms: D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007909:Lenses; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012031:Refractometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*