Unidirectional plasmonic Bragg reflector based on longitudinally asymmetric nanostructures

Plasmonic Bragg reflectors are essential components in plasmonic circuits. Here we propose a novel type of plasmonic Bragg reflector, which has very high reflectance for the right-side incidence and meanwhile has extremely large absorption for the left-side incidence. This device is composed of longitudinally asymmetric nanostructures in a metal-insulator-metal waveguide. In order to efficiently analyze, design, and optimize the reflection and transmission characteristics of the proposed device, we develop a semi-analytic coupled-mode model. Results show that the reflectance extinction ratio between plasmonic modes incident from the right-side and the left-side reaches 11 dB. We expect this device with such striking unidirectional reflection performance can be used as insulators in nanoplasmonic circuits.