Nanoscale Si-based photonics for next generation integrated circuits

Silicon-based integrated photonics became a very attractive technology for guiding and manipulating of light in highly integrated structures due to the large index contrast between silicon and cladding materials allowing for very high mode confinement. Moreover, these structures can be realized by conventional planar CMOS techniques. Different passive devices based on Si nanowire waveguides have been realized using SOI technology or amorphous silicon deposition with applications in highly integrated communication systems for optical networking, bio and sensing, as well as for computer interconnects in data centers. Nevertheless for future use, especially for inter-core and intra-core computer communication, structures allowing for subwavelength light confinement based on surface plasmon waveguiding are an attractive solution. Different methods to decrease or compensate the intrinsic high losses of these structures have been proposed. Here we report our work on design and experimental realization of hybrid plasmonic waveguides and devices that allow for considerable decrease of losses, still keeping sub-wavelength light confinement.