Surface plasmon polariton based modulators and switches operating at telecom wavelengths

We report design, fabrication, and characterization of thermo-optic Mach-Zender interferometric modulators and directional-coupler switches whose operation utilizes the long-range surface-plasmon-polariton waveguiding along 15-nm-thin and 8-mum-wide gold stripes embedded in polymer and heated by electrical signal currents. The devices are characterized at the light wavelength of 1.55 mum, featuring low driving powers (<10 mW for modulators and <100 mW for switches), high extinction ratios (>30 dB), moderate response times (similar to1 ms), and the total (fiber-to-fiber) insertion loss of similar to13 dB (for modulators) and similar to11 dB (for switches) when using single-mode fibers. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.