• DOI:10.1038/srep03095
• Corpus ID: 5624681

Position-sensitive spectral splitting with a plasmonic nanowire on silicon chip

@article{Hu2013PositionsensitiveSS,
  title={Position-sensitive spectral splitting with a plasmonic nanowire on silicon chip},
  author={Qing Hu and Di-Hu Xu and Yu Zhou and Ruwen Peng and Renhao Fan and Nicholas Xuanlai Fang and Qian-jin Wang and Xianrong Huang and Mu Wang},
  journal={Scientific Reports},
  year={2013},
  volume={3}
}

• Qing Hu, Di-Hu Xu, +6 authors Mu Wang
• Published 31 October 2013
• Physics
• Scientific Reports

On-chip nanophotonics serves as the foundation for the new generation of information technology, but it is challenged by the diffraction limit of light. With the capabilities of confining light into (deep) subwavelength volumes, plasmonics makes it possible to dramatically miniaturize optical devices so as to integrate them into silicon chips. Here we demonstrate that by cascading nano-corrugation gratings with different periodicities on silver nanowires atop silicon, different colors can be spatially separated and chronologically released at different grating junctions. The released light frequency depends on the grating arrangement and corrugation periodicities. Hence the nanowire acts as a spectral splitter for sorting/demultiplexing photons at different nano-scale positions with a ten-femtosecond-level interval. Such nanowires can be constructed further into compact 2D networks or circuits. We believe that this study provides a new and promising approach for realizing spatiotemporal-sensitive spectral splitting and optical signal processing on nanoscales, and for general integration of nanophotonics with microelectronics.