Plasmonic and semiconductor building blocks for nanophotonic devices

Plasmonics is an exploding new field of science and technology in which the flow of light can be molded at the nanoscale using metallic nanostructures. This newly found ability is rapidly impacting every facet of optics and photonics and is enabling a myriad of exciting new technologies. Semiconductor nanophotonics has also seen tremendous recent progress in the development of high performance light sources, waveguides, modulators, and detectors. As plasmonic and semiconductor nanostructures can be fabricated using the same (possible CMOS compatible) nanofabrication techniques, it is worth exploring opportunities at the interface between semiconductor photonics and plasmonics. I will discuss recent progress in the development of hybrid devices that exploit the best of each technology and offer higher performance or new types of functionalities.