Localized plasmonic field enhancement in shaped graphene nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbon (GNR), as a fundamental component to support the surface plasmon waves, are envisioned to play an important role in graphene plasmonics. However, to achieve extremely confinement of the graphene surface plasmons (GSPs) is still a challenging. Here, we propose a scheme to realize the excitation of localized surface plasmons with very strong field enhancement at the resonant frequency. By sinusoidally patterning the boundaries of GNRs, a new type of plasmon mode with field energy concentrated on the shaped grating crest (crest mode) can be efficiently excited, creating a sharp notch on the transmission spectra. Specifically, the enhanced field energies are featured by 3 times of magnitude stronger than that of the unpatterned classical GNRs. Through theoretical analyses and numerical calculations, we confirm that the enhanced fields of the crest modes can be tuned not only by changing the width, period and Fermi energy as traditional ribbons, but also by varying the grating amplitude and period. This new technique of manipulating the light-graphene interaction gives an insight of modulating plasmon resonances on graphene nanostrutures, making the proposed pattern method an attractive candidate for designing optical filters, spatial light modulators, and other active plasmonic devices.