VLSI photonic interconnection of dielectric and plasmonic nano-wires and devices

We report on the results of our study on the design of VLSI (very large scale integrated) photonic interconnection schemes and structures using surface plasmonic polariton (SPP) nanowires and dielectric nanowires as applicable for VLSI photonic circuit chips and networks. We present, for the first time to our knowledge, on the theory that we have developed to explain the physics of the propagation of light through dielectric nanowires. In this model, we use the surface free electrons on the dielectric nanowires as those carrying the surface plasmonic waves like the surface free electrons formed on the carbon nanotubes. We investigated various cases of dispersion relations and found that this model explains very well the experimental observation of light-wave transmission through dielectric nanowires. We then present the results of our analyses on the effect of the plasmonic polarizations on the propagation along various nanowire structures and coupling structures. And, we calculate the coupled eigenmodes of even and odd eigenmodes directly to analyze the coupling between two nano-waveguides. We use three different models of coupling structures: Single SPP waveguides, stripe SPP waveguides, and slot SPP waveguides. We design and integrate coupling structures of various forms of plasmonic nanowires and dielectric nanowires and examine the optical mismatch problems between the two wires for VLSI nanophotonic interconnection applications. We introduce the concept of “optical impedance” caused by various forms of mismatches such as polarization mismatch, size mismatch, dielectric mismatch, and shape mismatch. We use silver and gold metal for plasmonic nanowires and silicon for dielectric nanowires. We design and analyze the characteristics of various forms of plasmonic nano-devices such as plasmonic nano-focus adaptors, plasmonic directional couplers, power splitters, wavelength splitters, polarization splitters, plasmonic nanoring switches, plasmonic na- o-modulators, and plasmonic nano-multimode interferometers (MMIs). We then investigate on the interconnection and integration of these structures for various generic and application-specific VLSI photonic circuit applications. The talk will present some of the recent examples and progresses of our study toward VLSI photonic circuit and network applications.