Novel plasmonic devices for nano-photonics applications

Abstract

Plasmonics have attracted a great deal of interest because of their potential to design novel photonics devices which have unique optical properties. This dissertation focuses on novel plasmonic device designs for photonics applications. Electromagnetic properties of metamaterials are characterized and the resonance mechanism of Split Ring Resonator (SRR) structure is investigated. Furthermore, novel SRR-based metamaterial structures are studied. We demonstrated the significant plasmonic enhancement in the transmission characteristics through a sub-wavelength aperture by utilizing SRR resonances. Electrical tuning of plasmonic resonance with varying gate bias by using graphene is observed. Also, electrical properties of graphene is investigated. Fabrication of electrically gated graphene based plasmonic structures are realized. In addition, we utilized metamaterials to design novel photonic devices and we experimentally studied and numerically verified the novel propagation characteristics of graphene-based photonic devices and 3D nanostructures. The proposed structures are designed, simulated, fabricated and measured. The simulations and experimental results are in good agreement and shows significant enhancement of transmission characteristics of plasmonic devices. The dimensions of the structures that are designed in our work is less than 10 times smaller than the incident wavelength (r/λ~0.1) which is a desired property for enhanced light confinement of sensors. Also, the gate tuning of SRR's plasmonic resonance is the first demonstration in the contemporary literature according to our knowledge.