ERI: Thermal Assisted Plasmon-Plasmon interaction for active control of Electron Density Waves at Metal Semiconductor Interfaces - A Roadmap to Novel All-Optical Devices

The present ‘information age’ demands for the capability to transfer and process huge amount of data relatively in short span of time. In applications from health care, cyber security, banking, communications, defense and space exploration, ultra-fast data transfer is accomplished by encoding the data on photons. Whereas the need for faster data processing in fueled the innovations and advancements in microprocessor technology with progression towards smaller, ultrafast, and low-power electronics.

Despite continuous progression aiming at developing efficient electronic devices; saturation in the microprocessor clock speed at about 5GHz has been observed over the past few years. This can be attributed to the losses associated with electronic interconnects and heat dissipation. All-optical analogues are increasingly becoming an attractive alternative to overcome the limitations associated with electronics.

However, implementation of photonic processing device needs efficient mechanism to achieve photon-to-photon interactions at micro and nanoscale scale sizes. Here we propose a new data processing element, an all-optical switch, with potential to serve as an optical analogue of electronic devices with high data rates, while concurrently enabling device sizes that are considerably smaller than traditional photonic elements.

A significant impact of this work will be to open avenues for the undergraduate students, including underrepresented groups, disabled veterans and low-income populous in the Alabama black belt region to participate in the cutting-edge research activities in the field of semiconductor photonics and computational optics, implementing a new teaching methodology and pursuing a broader outreach by engaging high school children and local community with fascinating topics in optics.

This proposal seeks to develop a new all-optical plasmonic switch, referred to as Thermal Assisted All Plasmonic Switch with operation based on thermo-opto-electronic control of propagating surface plasmon modes at metal-doped semiconductor interfaces by the localized surface plasmon modes excited at the plasmonic structures (or particles). Furthermore, a synergy between the analytical and computational approaches will be pursued to uncover the extreme light matter interactions, kinetic and thermal mechanisms facilitating the localized surface plasmon resonances and surface plasmon polaritons interactions with largely inhomogeneous and rapidly changing local dielectric environments of the Metal-Semiconductor interfaces.

The gained understanding will be applied to design and test numerical prototypes of high-performance photonic elements such as all-optical switches, that can potentially provide high data rates at the nanoscopic and microscopic length scales. Numerical measurements, in conjunction with the theory, will establish the limitations and scaling laws governing the device 3dB bandwidth, determine device architectures for thermo-electro-optical signal modulation rates down to the picosecond time scale for signal modulation surpassing -10dB and mode sizes that are substantially smaller compared to present-day all-optical elements.

Notably, the proposed research presents a new approach and creates new pathway toward fast and efficient optical devices, circuitry, logic elements and additional may lead to innovative technologies related to integrated optics and all-optical electronics, a multibillion-dollar industry.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.