Metal-Coated Silicon Nanowire Plasmonic Waveguides

Abstract

We report that a metal-coated silicon nanowire functions as a plasmonic waveguide. Measurements showed that plasmonic waveguide modes propagated efficiently through a chemically synthesized silicon nanowire with a diameter of similar to 80nm coated with silver. The propagation lengths for transverse-magnetic and transverse-electric modes were estimated to be similar to 8.05 and similar to 6.61 mu m, respectively. Numerical simulations of the propagation length and mode profile of each plasmonic waveguide mode agreed with the experimental results. These plasmonic waveguides with highly smooth surfaces, fabricated through a bottom-up approach, represent a meaningful step toward the demonstration of an ultracompact subwavelength-scale plasmonic integrated circuit. (C) 2013 The Japan Society of Applied Physics