CMOS-compatible plasmonic waveguide platform and ring resonator for nanoscale electronic-photonic integrated circuits

We present a novel plasmonic waveguide platform Cu/SiO₂/Si/SiO₂/Cu to build high-performance CMOS-compatible plasmonic devices. The platform is based on metal-silica-silicon hybrid plasmonic waveguides. The optical performance of the waveguide platform is investigated and analyzed extensively with various geometries both theoretically and experimentally. The propagation loss can be achieved as low as 0.4 dB/μm with a small cross section SiO₂/Si/SiO₂ of 100×340 nm². As an example, a plasmonic ring resonator with the ring radius of 0.91 μm is designed with the platform. Excellent optical performance is measured including a free spectral range of 130 nm, extinction ratio of 24 dB, and insertion loss of 2.5 dB. We believe this work will be useful for the integration of nanoscale electronic-photonic integrated circuits.