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

术语“等离子体动力学”指的是处理电磁信号的科学和技术，通过在导体和介电介质之间的界面上，光子与自由电子振荡的相干耦合来处理电磁信号。这一研究领域已经成为一项极具前景的技术，主要应用于信息技术、能源、高密度数据存储、生命科学和安全等几个领域。在金属薄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发展是有吸引力的，在集成光子芯片中，信息可以全光处理，而不需要电子到光学和光到电子的转换，以及在完全兼容的平台上集成光子学和硅电子学。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而得到改善。近年来对等离子体的研究使各种具有定制光子特性的无源等离子体元件，如波导、等离子体晶体、等离子体超材料的开发取得了重大进展。然而，等离子体的研究几乎完全集中在纯金属纳米结构和由纳米结构参数固定性能的无源器件上。同时，现实生活中的应用需要主动控制来实现信号切换和调制，放大以补偿损失，以及直接产生和检测等离子体激元。如果等离子体纳米结构与功能（分子或铁电）材料杂化，所有这些都可以实现。在这里，我们建议开发和研究由纳米结构金属与电介质结合组成的混合等离子体纳米结构，以实现等离子体电路的主动功能。该项目将释放等离子体在改善现实世界光子和光电子器件方面的潜力，并提供对光学物理和光子技术各个领域重要的物理现象的见解。

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.