Active Plasmonics: Electronic and All-optical Control of Photonic Signals on Sub-wavelength Scales

术语“等离子体激元学”是指通过在导体和电介质之间的界面处将光子相干耦合到自由电子振荡来处理电磁信号的科学和技术。这一研究领域已成为一项非常有前途的技术，有几个主要应用领域：信息技术，能源，高密度数据存储，生命科学和安全。在金属膜上以表面等离子体波的形式引导光的机会对于集成光子芯片的开发是有吸引力的，在集成光子芯片中，信息可以被全光学地处理而不需要电子到光学和光学到电子的转换，以及用于在完全兼容的平台上将光子学与硅电子学集成。光电器件，如发光二极管和光电探测器的性能也可以通过将它们与等离子体纳米结构集成来改善。等离子体激元学的最新研究已经在开发具有定制光子特性的各种无源等离子体激元部件（诸如波导、等离子体激元晶体、等离子体激元超材料）方面取得了重大进展。然而，等离子体激元研究几乎完全集中在纯金属纳米结构和具有由纳米结构参数固定的性质的无源器件上。同时，实际应用需要主动控制来实现信号切换和调制、放大以补偿沿着等离子体激元的直接产生和检测的损耗。所有这些都可以实现，如果等离子体纳米结构与功能（分子或铁电）材料杂交。在这里，我们建议开发和研究混合等离子体纳米结构组成的纳米结构的金属结合，使等离子体电路中的活性功能。该项目将释放等离子体的潜力，改善现实世界的光子和光电器件，并提供洞察物理现象，这是重要的光学物理和光子技术的各个领域。

The term 'plasmonics' refers to the science and technology dealing with manipulation of electromagnetic signals by coherent coupling of photons to free electron oscillations at the interface between a conductor and a dielectric. This field of research has emerged as an extremely promising technology with several main fields of application: information technologies, energy, high-density data storage, life sciences and security. The opportunity to guide light in the form of surface plasmon waves on metallic films is attractive for the development of integrated photonic chips where the information can be processed all-optically without the need of electronic-to-optical and optical-to-electronic conversion, as well as for integrating photonics with silicon electronics on a fully compatible platform. Performance of optoelectronic devices, such as light emitting diodes and photodetectors, can also be improved by integrating them with plasmonic nanostructures. Recent research in plasmonics has led to significant progress in development of various passive plasmonic components, such as waveguides, plasmonic crystals, plasmonic metamaterials, with tailored photonic properties. Plasmonic studies have, however, almost exclusively concentrated on pure metallic nanostructures and passive devices with properties fixed by the nanostructure parameters. At the same time, real-life applications require active control to achieve signal switching and modulation, amplification to compensate losses along with the direct generation and detection of plasmons. All these can be realised if plasmonic nanostructures are hybridised with functional (molecular or ferroelectric) materials. Here we propose to develop and study hybrid plasmonic nanostructures consisting of nanostructured metals combined with dielectrics to enable active functionalities in plasmonic circuitry. This project will unlock the plasmonics' potential for improvement of real-world photonic and optoelectronic devices and provide insight into physical phenomena which are important for various areas of optical physics and photonic technologies.