Active plasmonics in WDM traffic switching applications

作者：Papaioannou Sotirios^*; Kalavrouziotis Dimitrios; Vyrsokinos Konstantinos; Weeber Jean Claude; Hassan Karim; Markey Laurent; Dereux Alain; Kumar Ashwani; Bozhevolnyi Sergey I; Baus Matthias; Tekin Tolga; Apostolopoulos Dimitrios; Avramopoulos Hercules; Pleros Nikos

来源：Scientific Reports, 2012, 2(1): 652.

DOI：10.1038/srep00652

With metal stripes being intrinsic components of plasmonic waveguides, plasmonics provides a %26quot;naturally%26quot; energy-efficient platform for merging broadband optical links with intelligent electronic processing, instigating a great promise for low-power and small-footprint active functional circuitry. The first active Dielectric-Loaded Surface Plasmon Polariton (DLSPP) thermo-optic (TO) switches with successful performance in single-channel 10 Gb/s data traffic environments have led the inroad towards bringing low-power active plasmonics in practical traffic applications. In this article, we introduce active plasmonics into Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) switching applications, using the smallest TO DLSPP-based Mach-Zehnder interferometric switch reported so far and showing its successful performance in 4310 Gb/s low-power and fast switching operation. The demonstration of the WDM-enabling characteristics of active plasmonic circuits with an ultra-low power 3 response time product represents a crucial milestone in the development of active plasmonics towards real telecom and datacom applications, where low-energy and fast TO operation with small-size circuitry is targeted.

• 出版日期2012-9-12