Integrated plasmonic circuitry on a vertical-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor laser platform

McPolin, Cillian P.T.; Bouillard, Jean-Sebastien; Vilain, Sebastien; Krasavin, Alexey V.; Dickson, Wayne; O'Connor, Daniel; Wurtz, Gregory A.; Justice, John; Corbett, Brian; Zayats, Anatoly V.

Abstract

Integrated plasmonic sources and detectors are imperative in the practical development of plasmonic circuitry for bio- and chemical sensing, nanoscale optical information processing, as well as transducers for high-density optical data storage. Here we show that vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be employed as an on-chip, electrically pumped source or detector of plasmonic signals, when operated in forward or reverse bias, respectively. To this end, we experimentally demonstrate surface plasmon polariton excitation, waveguiding, frequency conversion and detection on a VCSEL-based plasmonic platform. The coupling efficiency of the VCSEL emission to waveguided surface plasmon polariton modes has been optimized using asymmetric plasmonic nanostructures. The plasmonic VCSEL platform validated here is a viable solution for practical realizations of plasmonic functionalities for various applications, such as those requiring sub-wavelength field confinement, refractive index sensitivity or optical near-field transduction with electrically driven sources, thus enabling the realization of on-chip optical communication and lab-on-a-chip devices.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Aug 5, 2016
• Journal: Nature communications
• Electronic ISSN: 2041-1723
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Article Number: ARTN 12409
• Pages: 12409
• APA6 Citation: McPolin, C. P., Bouillard, J., Vilain, S., Krasavin, A. V., Dickson, W., O'Connor, D., …Zayats, A. V. (2016). Integrated plasmonic circuitry on a vertical-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor laser platform. Nature communications, 7, (12409). doi:10.1038/ncomms12409. ISSN 2041-1723
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12409
• Keywords: Plasmonic circuitry
• Publisher URL: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12409
• Copyright Statement: © The Author(s) 2016. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Additional Information: This is a copy of an open access article published in: Nature communications, 2016, v.7.