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

等离子体是指通过在导体和介质之间的界面上通过光子与自由电子振荡的相干耦合来处理电磁信号的科学和技术。这一研究领域已经成为一项非常有前途的技术，具有几个主要的应用领域：信息技术、能源、高密度数据存储、生命科学和安全。在金属薄膜上以表面等离子体波的形式引导光的机会对集成光子芯片的发展很有吸引力，其中信息可以在不需要电-光和光-电转换的情况下被全光处理，以及在完全兼容的平台上集成光子学和硅电子学。发光二极管和光电探测器等光电子器件的性能也可以通过将它们与等离子体纳米结构相结合来提高。近年来，等离子体激元的研究取得了长足的进展，各种无源等离子体器件，如光波导、等离子体晶体、等离子体超材料等，都具有可定制的光子特性。然而，等离子体激元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特性的无源器件上。同时，现实生活中的应用需要有源控制来实现信号的切换和调制、放大以补偿损耗以及等离子体的直接产生和检测。如果等离子体纳米结构与功能(分子或铁电)材料杂交，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和介电材料组成的混合等离子体纳米结构，以实现等离子体电路中的主动功能。该项目将释放等离子体激元改进真实世界光子和光电子器件的潜力，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洞察。

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.