Silicon Plasmonics

The implementation of plasmonic components using silicon platform holds a great promise for the development of advanced nanoscale on-chip photonic functionalities. The combination of high optical mode confinement offered by plasmonics together with mature and well established CMOS technology makes the field of silicon plasmonics a promising technological solution for intra-chip integration of nanoscale optical and opto-electronic devices operating side by side with modern electronics. The great opportunity of the silicon plasmonic platform resides in bridging the dimensionality gap between the photonic and electronic components on-chip, while moderating the loss-confinement limitation of plasmonic structures. In this section we refer to the fundamental problems of silicon-plasmonic integration and review the current state of the art demonstrations in the field with special emphasis on the advantages of using plasmonics for the purpose of constructing of novel nanoscale devices such as modern plasmonic modulators, concentrators and photodetectors for on-chip applications.