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Highly efficient on-chip direct electronic–plasmonic transducers

Nature Photonics volume 11, pages 623–627 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Photonic elements can carry information with a capacity exceeding 1,000 times that of electronic components, but, due to the optical diffraction limit, these elements are large and difficult to integrate with modern-day nanoelectronics or upcoming packages, such as three-dimensional integrated circuits or stacked high-bandwidth memories1,2,3. Surface plasmon polaritons can be confined to subwavelength dimensions and can carry information at high speeds (>100 THz)4,5,6. To combine the small dimensions of nanoelectronics with the fast operating speed of optics via plasmonics, on-chip electronic–plasmonic transducers that directly convert electrical signals into plasmonic signals (and vice versa) are required. Here, we report electronic–plasmonic transducers based on metal–insulator–metal tunnel junctions coupled to plasmonic waveguides with high-efficiency on-chip generation, manipulation and readout of plasmons. These junctions can be readily integrated into existing technologies, and we thus believe that they are promising for applications in on-chip integrated plasmonic circuits.

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Fig. 1: On-chip electronic–plasmonic transducer.
Fig. 2: Plasmon excitation and detection by MIM-TJs.
Fig. 3: Plasmon excitation and detection by on-chip coupled MIM-TJs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the National Research Foundation (NRF) for supporting this research under the Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under its Medium Sized Centre Programme and the Competitive Research Programme (CRP) (NRF-CRP17-2017-08). H.S.C. acknowledges the support of the A*STAR Computational Resource Centre through the use of its high-performance computing facilities. J. Martin is thanked for useful discussions.

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Author notes

  1. Wei Du and Tao Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 3, 117543, Singapore, Singapore

    Wei Du, Tao Wang & Christian A. Nijhuis

  2. Department of Electronics and Photonics, Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), 1 Fusionopolis Way, #16-16 Connexis, 138632, Singapore, Singapore

    Hong-Son Chu

  3. Centre for Advanced 2D Materials and Graphene Research Centre, National University of Singapore, 6 Science Drive 2, 117546, Singapore, Singapore

    Christian A. Nijhuis

  4. NUSNNI Nanocore, National University of Singapore, 117411, Singapore, Singapore

    Christian A. Nijhuis

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  1. Wei Du
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  2. Tao Wang
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  4. Christian A. Nijhuis
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Contributions

W.D. fabricated the samples. W.D. and T.W. performed the experiments and analysed the data. T.W. and H.S.C. performed theoretical calculations. C.A.N. conceived and designed the experiments. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Christian A. Nijhuis.

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Highly Efficient On-Chip Direct Electronic-Plasmonic Transducers

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Du, W., Wang, T., Chu, HS. et al. Highly efficient on-chip direct electronic–plasmonic transducers. Nature Photon 11, 623–627 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-017-0003-5

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