Experimental investigation of plasmofluidic waveguides

Plasmofluidic waveguides are based on guiding light which is strongly confined in fluid with the assistance of a surface plasmon polariton. To realize plasmofluidic waveguides, metal-insulator-silicon-insulator-metal (MISIM) waveguides, which are hybrid plasmonic waveguides fabricated using standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, are employed. The insulator of the MISIM waveguide is removed to form 30-nm-wide channels, and they are filled with fluid. The plasmofluidic waveguide has a subwavelength-scale mode area since its mode is strongly confined in the fluid. The waveguides are experimentally characterized for different fluids. When the refractive index of the fluid is 1.440, the plasmofluidic waveguide with 190-nm-wide silicon has propagation loss of 0.46 dB/μm; the coupling loss between it and an ordinary silicon photonic waveguide is 1.79 dB. The propagation and coupling losses may be reduced if a few fabrication-induced imperfections are removed. The plasmofluidic waveguide may pave the way to a dynamically phase-tunable ultracompact device