High Q-factor plasmonic filters in nanoscale metal-insulator-metal waveguides

Summary form only given. In photonic waveguides, it has previously been shown that filters with very high Q-factors can be obtained by using a 1-D photonic crystal. Also in plasmonics, similar resonators have been proposed by integrating a 1-D plasmonic crystal inside a metal-insulator-metal waveguide, yielding a quality-factor of over 100. While in previous publications the proposed resonator is realized by integrating dielectrics with different indices or altering the thickness of the insulator, we demonstrate by finite-difference time domain simulations that 1-D plasmonic crystals can be made with a top-down approach starting from a planar layer stack, greatly improving the ease of fabrication and still obtaining Q-factors over 100.