Likang Cai

Design of plasmonic back structures for efficiency enhancement of thin-film amorphous Si solar cells

Metallic back structures with one-dimensional periodic nanoridges attached to a thin-film amorphous Si (a-Si) solar cell are numerically studied. At the interfaces between a-Si and metal materials, the excitation of surface-plasmon polaritons leads to obvious absorption enhancements in a wide near-IR range for different ridge shapes and periods. The highest enhancement factor of the cell external quantum efficiency is estimated to be 3.32. The optimized structure can achieve an increase of 17.12% in the cell efficiency.

Observation of ultra-narrow band plasmon induced transparency based on large-area hybrid plasmon-waveguide systems

We report the observation of an ultra-narrow band plasmon induced transparency resonance which is realized in a large area hybrid plasmon-waveguide system consisting of a gold nanowire array embedded in a slab waveguide. Due to the destructive interference between optical modes supported by the hybrid system, an ultra-narrow plasmon induced transparency resonance with a bandwidth of 8 nm at the wavelength of 966 nm was obtained (i.e., ∼1/120 of the peak wavelength at the incident angle of 60°). The group velocity is estimated to be ∼76, which is promising for miniaturized slow-light components.

Hybrid plasmonic waveguide with gain medium for lossless propagation with nanoscale confinement

In this Letter, we propose a hybrid plasmonic nanosystem consisting of a silver cladding layer with a semicylinder bump on top of InGaAsP nanowire. Because of the coupling between the dielectric waveguide mode and surface plasmon polariton mode, the hybrid plasmonic mode can exhibit low loss with strong field localization. The finite element method numerical simulations are employed to evaluate the performances of the hybrid mode. In order to achieve the lossless propagation of the hybrid mode with the mode area of 0.0058(λ²/4) at 1.55 μm, the material gain of 200 nm × 300 nm InGaAsP nanowire should reach 1223 cm⁻¹.

Slow light at terahertz frequencies in surface plasmon polariton assisted grating waveguide

A subwavelength grating waveguide (GW) consisting of two parallel metallic slabs with periodic corrugations on their inner boundaries is developed to slow down the speed of light at terahertz frequencies. Assisted by a tapered input port, our structure has a transfer efficiency of about 80% over a broad bandwidth and strong confinement in the subwavelength scale. Based on the GW, three graded GWs are designed to demonstrate that the spoof surface plasmon polaritons are slowed down and asymptotically stopped when they tend to the location, where the local cutoff frequency is the same as the frequency of the incident light.

Omnidirectional absorption enhancement in hybrid waveguide-plasmon system

We investigate the omnidirectional absorption enhancement induced by the excitation of the localized surface plasmon in the hybrid system consisting of a gold nanowire array embedded in a slab waveguide. Assisted by the waveguide layer, the hybrid system can support the localized waveguide-plasmon resonances for a wide range of incident angles. Theoretical and experimental results are both presented to demonstrate the omnidirectional absorption enhancement which could find important applications on plasmonic-assisted photovoltaic devices or photodetectors.

Hybrid waveguide-plasmon resonances in gold pillar arrays on top of a dielectric waveguide.

We propose a hybrid waveguide-plasmon system consisting of gold pillar arrays on top of a dielectric waveguide. The formation of extraordinary transmissions induced by the hybrid waveguide-plasmon resonances is investigated by rigorous coupled-wave analysis. The characteristics of the hybrid resonances can be predicted by introducing the photonic crystal slab theory. Extremely narrow absorption peaks and the electromagnetically induced transparency-like optical property are demonstrated in our hybrid system.

Multiple Surface Plasmon Resonances in Compound Structure with Metallic Nanoparticle and Nanohole Arrays

The optical properties of a compound structure with metallic nanoparticle and nanohole arrays are numerically investigated by the means of finite-difference time domain method. We report on the observation of multi-valleys in the reflection spectra due to the excitation of surface plasmon (SP) resonant modes of the compound structure. Simulation results show that multiple SP resonances consist of surface plasmon polaritons on the gold film, localized surface plasmons on the nanoparticles, and coupling mode between them. These findings are important for applications utilizing multiple surface plasmon resonances.

Two-step method to grow InAs epilayer on GaAs substrate using a new prelayer

The strain relaxed InAs grown on GaAs(0 0 1) under In-rich condition is investigated by X-ray double-crystal diffraction. It is found that the strain is fully relaxed within 10 nm thick InAs layer grown under this condition, which is much faster than the growth of a similar layer of InAs under As-condition. A new growth method to obtain a high-quality InAs layer is suggested

Flat Surface Plasmon Polariton Bands in Bragg Grating Waveguide for Slow Light

The formations of the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) bands in metal/air/metal (MAM) sub-wavelength plasmonic grating waveguide (PGW) are proposed. The band gaps originating from the highly localized resonances inside the grooves can be simply estimated from the round trip phase condition. Due to the overlap of the localized SPPs between the neighboring grooves, a Bloch mode forms in the bandgap and can be engineered to build a very flat dispersion for slow light. A chirped PGW with groove depth varying is also demonstrated to trap light, which is validated by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations with both continuous and pulse excitations.

Interfacial structure of molecular beam epitaxial grown cubic-GaN films on GaAs(001) probed by x-ray gazing-angle specular reflection

We report on a study of interfacial structure of GaN films grown on GaAs(001) substrates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy using x-ray grazing-angle specular reflection. We show that interfacial layers with electron densities differing from those of GaN and GaAs were formed upon deposition of GaN. It is also found that the interfacial structure of our systems depends strongly on the course of the initial layer deposition. The phase purity of the GaN films was examined by x-ray reciprocal space mapping. A simple kinetic growth model suggested by our results has been presented.