Plazmonik dalga kılavuzlarına verimli ve yön bağımlı eşleştirme için bütünleşik antenler

The use of metallic nano structures as building blocks of future optical integrated circuits is an appealing idea, since such an approach combines several advantages such as sub-wavelength fi eld confi nement, guided wave propagation and extraordinary field intensities. In fact, these are key requirements for designing optical integrated circuits which can process information at optical bandwidths, much higher than today's electronic circuits. Plasmonic waveguides are fundamental components of plasmonic circuits which can potentially be used to transfer data between diff erent parts on an optical chip. One of the open problems in the field is to efficiently couple the light from free space to these waveguides or from a waveguide mode to free space. Previous studies introduced scatterers which are placed at the opening of waveguides as couplers, however they lack analytical design formalism and have no systematic control over radiation angle. This dissertation focuses on designing effi cient couplers for plasmonic waveguides by employing more analytical approaches. We begin with a brief review of electromagnetic theory before introducing mode properties of plasmonic slot waveguides. Then, we investigate scattering characteristics of various scatterer designs. In the modeling chapter, we illustrate how to model an array of antenna scatterers embedded in waveguides for e fficient and directional coupling by employing scattering matrix formalism and antenna arrays. In the last part of the dissertation, we show fabrication details of plasmonic structures and we present the schematic of the optical measurement setup. Finally, we present conclusions and future directions of this research.