Abstract
A compact and highly efficient tunable and localized source of propagating surface plasmon-polaritons is proposed based on a protruded metal-insulator-metal (pMIM) structure. The protrusion along a segment of the pMIM forms a nanometer gap and allows a low voltage bias to generate a localized tunneling current. The tunneling current excited plasmons can be fully coupled to the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguiding segment of the pMIM without leakage and propagate a long distance as the gap in the MIM waveguiding segment is much larger than the gap in the protruded segment of the pMIM. Eigenmode and numerical analyses show that by using MIM structures as a benchmark, the pMIM structure enhances the total amount of average power that is transferred from the tunneling current into the excitation of intrinsic eigenmodes of the MIM waveguiding segment. Depending on the magnitude of the applied voltage bias, the pMIM structure supports single, dual and multi modes for a typical AuSiO2-Au design with a 500 nm-thick SiO2. Among all excited modes, the single mode operation allows highly efficient excitation of long travelling surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs) of up to 30 mu m. The electrical excitation of SPPs using pMIM structures opens up the possibility of integrating plasmon sources into nanoscale optoelectronic circuits to facilitate on-chip data communications. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America