Hybrid Plasmonic Devices for Optical Communication and Sensing

Hybrid plasmonic (HP) waveguides, a multi-layer waveguide structure supporting a hybrid mode of surface plasmonics and Si photonics, is a compromise way to integrate plasmonic materials into Si or SOI platforms, which can guide optical waves of sub-wavelength size, and with relative low propagation loss. In this thesis, several HP waveguides and devices are developed for the purposes of optical communications and sensing. The single-slot HP ring resonator sensor with 2.6µm radius can give a quality factor ( Q factor) of 1300 at the communication wavelength of 1.5µm with a device sensitivity of 102nm/RIU (refractive index unit). The Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with a 40µm double-slot HP waveguide has a device sensitivity around 474nm/RIU. The partly open silicon side-coupled double-slot HP ring resonator has a device sensitivity of 687.5nm/RIU, with a Q factor over 1000 after optimization. Further, an all-optical switching HP donut resonator with a photothermal plasmonic absorber is developed, utilizing the thermal expansion effect of silicon to shift the resonant peak of the HP resonator. The active area has a radius of 10µm to match the core size of a single-mode fiber. By applying 10mW power of the driving laser to the absorber, the resonator transmitted power can be changed by 15dB, with an average response time of 16µs. Using the same fabrication flow, and removing the oxide materials using hydrogen fluoride wet etching, a hollow HP waveguide is fabricated for liquid sensing applications. The experimentally demonstrated waveguide sensitivity is about 0.68, which is more than twice that of pure Si waveguide device. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) can also be integrated into vertical HP waveguides. By tuning the thickness of the air gap, over 20dB transmitted power change was experimentally demonstrated. This can be used for optical switching applications by either changing the absorption or phase of the HP devices.