Monolithic Plasmonic Waveguide Architecture for Passive and Active Optical Circuits

Guided-wave plasmonic circuits are promising platforms for sensing, interconnection, and quantum applications in the subdiffraction regime. Nonetheless, the loss-confinement trade-off remains a collective bottleneck for plasmonic-enhanced optical processes. Here, we report a unique plasmonic waveguide architecture that can alleviate such trade-off and improve the efficiencies of plasmonic-based emission, light-matter-interaction, and detection simultaneously. Specifically, record experimental attributes such as normalized Purcell factor approaching 10⁴, 10 dB amplitude modulation with <1 dB insertion loss and fJ-level switching energy, and photodetection sensitivity and internal quantum efficiency of -54 dBm and 6.4% respectively have been realized within our amorphous-based, coupled-mode plasmonic structure. The ability to support multiple optoelectronic phenomena while providing performance gains over existing plasmonic and dielectric counterparts offers a clear path toward reconfigurable, monolithic plasmonic circuits.