Hybrid plasmon waveguides with metamaterial substrate and dielectric substrate：A contrastive study

Hybrid plasmon waveguides, respectively, with metamaterial substrate and dielectric substrate are investigated and analyzed contrastively with a numerical finite element method. Basic properties, including propagation length L_p, effective mode area A_eff, and energy distribution, are obtained and compared with waveguide geometric parameters at 1.55 μ. For the waveguide with metamaterial substrate, propagation length L_p increases to several tens of microns and effective mode area A_eff is reduced by more than 3 times. Moreover, the near field region is expanded, leading to potential applications in nanophotonics. Therefore, it could be very helpful for improving the integration density in optical chips and developing functional components on a nanometer scale for all optical integrated circuits.