School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, 611731, China.
State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Partner Laboratory in City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 30;7(1):9959. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-10398-8.
Optical phased arrays have been demonstrated to enable a variety of applications ranging from high-speed on-chip communications to vertical surface emitting lasers. Despite the prosperities of the researches on optical phased arrays, presently, the reported designs of optical phased arrays are based on silicon photonics while plasmonic-based optical phased arrays have not been demonstrated yet. In this paper, a passive plasmonic optical phased array is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The beam of the proposed plasmonic optical phased array is steerable in the far-field area and a high directivity can be achieved. In addition, radio frequency phased array theory is demonstrated to be applicable to the description of the coupling conditions of the delocalized surface plasmons in optical phased arrays and thus the gap between the phased arrays at two distinctly different wavelengths can be bridged. The potential applications of the proposed plasmonic phased arrays include on-chip optical wireless nanolinks, optical interconnections and integrated plasmonic lasers.
光学相控阵已经被证明可以实现各种应用，从高速片上通信到垂直表面发射激光器。尽管光学相控阵的研究取得了很大的进展，但目前报道的光学相控阵设计基于硅光子学，而基于等离子体的光学相控阵尚未得到证明。本文提出并实验验证了一种被动等离子体光学相控阵。所提出的等离子体光学相控阵的光束在远场区域是可转向的，可以实现高指向性。此外，还证明了射频相控阵理论适用于描述光学相控阵中非局域表面等离子体的耦合条件，从而可以弥合两个明显不同波长的相控阵之间的间隙。所提出的等离子体相控阵的潜在应用包括片上光无线纳米链路、光互连和集成等离子体激光器。
