Active switching of surface plasmon polariton using MEMS actuators

This paper presents a movable gold waveguide for switching surface plasmon polariton (SPP) using the MEMS technology, which provides a simple but effective way to route the SPP. The input waveguide is patterned on top of a cantilever beam, and can be actuated to align the input to one of the two output gold waveguides fixed on the substrate. The gold waveguides are 2- mum wide and 40-nm thick patterned on a silicon substrate through a SiO₂ layer. This is the first attempt to realize active switching function of SPP and would help push the SPP from physical study to applicable devices.