Abstract

The size of photonic components is fundamentally limited by the diffraction of light, while miniaturization is one of the key concepts in the development of high-speed and energy-efficient electronic and optoelectronic chips. Plasmonics attracts great interest thanks to the unique opportunity to confine light to a space much smaller than the light wavelength by converting it into surface plasmons. However, this ability to get over the diffraction limit comes at a cost of strong signal attenuation due to absorption in the metal, and characteristics acceptable for practical applications have been demonstrated only with noble metals – gold and silver. These materials do not enter into chemical reactions and therefore they are not compatible with industry-standard fabrication processes, such as CMOS technology. Recent research efforts have brought novel materials, such as titanium nitride, to plasmonics [1]. Despite that they are perspective for different metamaterial applications, these materials cannot compete with silver and gold in infrared plasmonics [2,3].

© 2017 IEEE