Integrated System-Level Electronic Design Automation (EDA) for Designing Plasmonic Nanocircuits

This paper proposes a system-level circuit simulation framework for nanoplasmonic devices, and presents an example of the simulation of a plasmonic nanocircuit. The electronic design automation environment provides an equivalent circuit model library for several plasmonic metal-insulator-metal-based devices. The accuracy of the equivalent models for the plasmonic nanocircuit library is verified by using full-wave simulations and analytical equations. These models are then used to design an ultracompact Mach-Zehnder plasmonic modulator. It is shown that the voltage required to achieve a π phase shift V_π in the modulator can be predicted by the simulator with reasonable accuracy. The optimized design of the modulator is also presented that reduces the value of V_π according to the required specification.