Energy transport in metal nanoparticle plasmon waveguides
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Energy transport in metal nanoparticle plasmon waveguides Stefan A. Maier*, Pieter G. Kik, Luke A. Sweatlock, and Harry A. Atwater Thomas J. Watson Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA J. J. Penninkhof and A. Polman FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Kruislaan 407, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands Sheffer Meltzer, Elad Harel, Ari A.G. Requicha, and Bruce E. Koel Laboratory for Molecular Robotics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA *e-mail: [email protected] Abstract We investigate the optical properties of arrays of closely spaced metal nanoparticles in view of their potential to guide electromagnetic energy with a lateral mode confinement below the diffraction limit of light. Finite-difference time-domain simulations of short arrays of noble metal nanospheres show that electromagnetic pulses at optical frequencies can propagate along the arrays due to near-field interactions between plasmon-polariton modes of adjacent nanoparticles. Near-field microscopy enables the study of energy transport in these plasmon waveguides and shows experimental evidence for energy propagation over a distance of 0.5 µm for plasmon waveguides consisting of spheroidal silver particles fabricated using electron beam lithography. Introduction The miniaturization of optical devices to size dimensions akin to their electronic counterparts is a major goal of current research efforts in optoelectronics, photonics and semiconductor manufacturing. A high integration of optical components allowing the fabrication of all-optical chips for computing and sensing requires both a confinement of the guided optical modes to small dimensions and the ability to route energy around sharp corners. Current technologies that are driving a revolution in the fabrication of integrated optical components are planar waveguides, optical fibers and photonic crystals, which can confine and guide electromagnetic energy in spatial dimensions in the micron and sub-micron regime. Whereas waveguides based on the principle of total internal reflection such as optical fibers do not allow for the guiding of light around sharp corners with a bending radius considerably smaller than the wavelength of light λ [1], engineering of defect modes in photonic crystals has enabled the fabrication of defect waveguides with complex guiding geometries [2, 3]. The further integration of active devices such as defect mode lasers into photonic crystals [4] will ensure a prominent spot for this technology in the creation of optical chips. The size and density of optical devices employing these technologies is nonetheless restricted by the diffraction limit λ/2n of light, which imposes a lower size limit of a few hundred
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