Hybrid plasmonic waveguides and devices for optical interconnects

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology has been successfully used for realization of ultra-compact, highly integrated photonic devices due to large refractive index contrast between core and cladding of waveguiding structures and very sharp bending. Unfortunately the diffraction limit of light does not allow to decrease the core size below half of the wavelength of the guided light and so puts the limit for photonics to reach the real nano-scale and match the size of CMOS electronics. Alternative solutions in form of surface plasmon (SP) waveguides can provide the nano-scale waveguiding with subwavelength light confinement, but introduce very high losses. In this talk we will present our theoretical and experimental work on hybrid plasmonic waveguides and devices that enable nano-scale light confinement and sub-micrometer bending with reasonable propagation losses.