Author Affiliations
Abstract
We present an experimental study on a unidirectional surface plasmon polariton (SPP) launcher based on a compact binary area-coded nanohole array, where the symmetry breaking is realized via effective-index modulation in the binary pattern of the gold film, thus avoiding the challenge of modulating nanostructure in its depth. It is shown that SPPs can be unidirectionally and effectively excited at normal incidence. The SPP intensity and asymmetric excitation ratio, which are two key figure-of-merits of SPP launchers, can be improved by increasing the number of array rows. The proposed device is compatible with most mature top-town nanofabrication techniques and thus is perspective for low-cost mass production.
240.0240 Optics at surfaces 230.0230 Optical devices 240.6680 Surface plasmons Chinese Optics Letters
2014, 12(8): 082401