An Efficient Large-Area Grating Coupler for Surface Plasmon Polaritons

Published

June 1, 2012

Author(s)

Stefan T. Koev, Amit K. Agrawal, Henri J. Lezec, Vladimir A. Aksyuk

Abstract

We report the design, fabrication and characterization of a periodic grating of shallow rectangular grooves in a metallic film with the goal of maximizing the coupling efficiency of an extended plane wave (PW) of visible or near-IR frequency light into a single surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode on a flat metal surface. A PW-to-SPP power conversion factor > 45% is demonstrated at a wavelength of 780 nm, which exceeds by an order of magnitude the experimental performance of SPP grating couplers reported to date at any wavelength. Conversion efficiency is maximized by matching the dissipative SPP losses along the grating surface to the local coupling strength. This critical coupling condition is experimentally achieved by tailoring the groove depth and width using a focused ion beam.

Citation

Plasmonics

Volume

7

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

grating coupler, surface plasmon, optimization, efficiency, gold

Citation

Koev, S. , Agrawal, A. , Lezec, H. and Aksyuk, V. (2012), An Efficient Large-Area Grating Coupler for Surface Plasmon Polaritons, Plasmonics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909363 (Accessed October 22, 2025)