CONTENTS

● ABSTRACT
● WHAT IS PLASMONICS
● NEED FOR PLASMONICS
● WORKING MECHANISM OF PLASMONICS
● APPLICATIONS OF PLASMONICS
● CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
● REFERENCE
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ABSTRACT
Electronic circuits provide us with the ability to control the transport and storage
of electrons. However, the performance of electronic circuits is now becoming
rather limited when digital information needs to be sent from one point to another.
Photonics offers an effective solution to this problem by implementing optical
communication systems based on optical fibers and photonic circuits.
Unfortunately, the micrometer-scale bulky components of photonics have limited
the integration of these components into electronic chips, which are now
measured in nanometers..
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Surface plasmon–based circuits, which merge electronics and photonics at the
nanoscale, may offer a solution to this size-compatibility problem. Here we
review the current status and future prospects of plasmonics in various
applications including plasmonic chips, light generation, and nanolithography

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WHAT IS PLASMONICS
● The term ‘PLASMONICS’ is derived from plasmons.
● Plasmonics is a branch of science and technology dealing with coupling of
photons to free electron oscillations at the interface between a conductor
and a dielectric.
● Though the concept of plasmons was introduced more than a century ago
(G. Mie, 1980), only today practical realization of the plasmonics becomes
feasible thanks to new nanofabrication technology and powerful simulation
tools.
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● Plasmonics main entity is surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), which are
two dimensional electromagnetic waves that propagate between
conductors (metals) and dielectrics.
● These surface waves are excites when light strikes the dielectric metal
interface; the energy of the photons is transferred to the metal and
resonantly excites the oscillations of free electrons.
● The ‘electrons’ response results in the creation of dynamic charges.

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NEED FOR PLASMONICS
● The idea of Plasmonics illustrate the rich array of optical properties that
inspire researchers in this field. By studying the elaborate interplay
between electromagnetic waves and free electrons, investigators have
identified new possibilities for transmitting data in our integrated circuits,
illuminating our homes and fighting cancer.
● One key advantage of plasmonic devices is that they have the ability to
confine electromagnetic oscillations at optical frequencies to volumes that
are much smaller than the wavelength that would be generated in free
space at that frequency. 6
● This is useful in generation of light by devices much smaller than the
wavelength, as in plasmonic lasers such as spasers (surface plasmon
lasers).
● Optical fibers now span the globe, guiding light signals that convey
voluminous streams of voice communications and vast amounts of data.
Unfortunately, the size and performance of photonic devices are
constrained by the diffraction limit because of the interference between
closely spaced light waves , width of optical fiber carrying them must
be at least half the light’s wavelength inside the material.

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 WORKING MECHANISM OF
PLASMONICS
● Light beam striking a metal surface generates plasmons, electron density
waves that can carry huge amounts of data.If focused on surface etched
with circular groove the beam produces concentric waves originating
electrons into high and low density rings.
● Surface plasmons can be excited on a flat nono-film , nanostrip or other
shaped nanoparticles such as nanosphere, nanorod, nanocube and
nanostar. When nanoparticles are used to excite surface plasmons by
light, these are known as localised surface plasmons.
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● Silver and gold are of particular interest due to their high field
enhancement and resonance wavelength lying in the visible spectral
regime. The speed of these surface plasmons is almost equal to that of
light with wavelength of the order of tens of nanometers.

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 UNIQUE FEATURES OF
PLASMONICS
● Surface plasmons are those plasmons that are confined to surfaces and that
interact strongly with light resulting in a polaritons. They occur at the
interface of a vacuum or material with a positive dielectric constant with
that of a negative dielectric constant (usually a metal or doped dielectric).
They play a role in Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy in explaining
anomalies in diffraction from metal gratings, among other things. Surface
Plasmon Resonance is used by biochemists to study the mechanisms and
kinetics of ligands binding to receptors (i.e. a substrate binding to an
enzyme). 10
Surface plasmon polaritons (SPP):

● Electro-magnetic wave confined at the metal surface

● Overcome diffraction limit: Nano-optical components “light on a wire”
● Strongly enhanced local fields:
● Resonant build-up, lightning-rod effect & non-linear optical effects,
sensors.
● To study propagation of spp a photon scanning tunneling microscope
(PSTM) may be used.
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Fig 1:An SPP propagating along a metal dielectric Fig 2:schematic operation of PSTM

Interface. that enables study of SPP propagation

along metal film surfaces

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Fig: Operating regimes applicable sizes and speed scale for
Plasmonic and other devices.
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APPLICATIONS OF PLASMONICS
1. SPASER – PLASMONIC ANALOG OF LASER :

● The acronym SPASER stands for Surface Plasmon Amplification of

Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
● It can be fabricated using semiconductor quantum dots and metal
particles.
● Radiative energy from the quantum dots would be transformed into
plasmons, which would then be amplified in a plasmonic resonator.

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● Because the plasmons generated by a SPASER would be much more
tightly localized than a conventional laser beam, the device could operate
at very low power and selectively excite very small objects.
● As a result, SPASERs could make spectroscopy more sensitive and pave
the way for hazardous-materials detectors that could identify minute
amounts of chemicals or viruses.

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2. PLASMONSTER - A FASTER CHIP:

● Slot waveguides could significantly boost the speed of computer chips by

rapidly funneling large amounts of data to the circuits that perform logical
operations.
● The Plasmonsters are composed of slot waveguides that measure 100nm
across at their broadest points and only 20nm across at the intersection.

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3. INVISIBILITY CLOAKS

● The most fascinating potential application of plasmonics would be the

invention of an invisibility cloak. A material's refractive index is the ratio
of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light in the material.
● Exciting a plasmonic structure with radiation that is close to the structure's
resonant frequency can make its refractive index equal to air's, meaning
that it would neither bend nor reflect light.
● The structure would become invisible, at least to radiation in a selected
range of frequencies.
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● The structure would absorb light, but if it were laminated with a material
that produces optical gain--amplifying the transmitted signal just as the
resonator in a SPASER would--the increase in intensity would offset the
absorption losses.
● A true invisibility cloak, however, must be able to hide anything within
the structure and work for all frequencies of visible light. It is shown that
a shell of meta-materials can reroute the electromagnetic waves traveling
through it, diverting them around a spherical region within.
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4. PLASMONIC NANOCELL THERAPY:

● The potential uses of plasmonic devices go far beyond computing.

Nanoshell that consists of a thin layer of gold--typically about 10
nanometers thick--deposited around the entire surface of a silica particle
about 100 nanometers across.

● Exposure to electromagnetic waves generates electron oscillations in the

gold shell;

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● Because of the coupling interaction between the fields on the shell's inner
and outer surfaces, varying the size of the particle and the thickness of the
gold layer changes the wavelength at which the particle resonantly
absorbs energy.

● In this way, investigators can design the nanoshells to selectively absorb

wavelengths as short as a few hundred nanometers (the blue end of the
visible spectrum) or as long as nearly 10 microns (the near infrared). This
phenomenon has turned nanoshells into a promising tool for cancer
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5. PLASMONIC LED :

● Plasmonic materials may also revolutionize the lighting industry by

making LEDs bright enough to compete with incandescent bulbs.
● Beginning in the 1980s, researchers recognized that the plasmonic
enhancement of the electric field at the metal-dielectric boundary could
increase the emission rate of luminescent dyes placed near the metal's
surface.

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● More recently, it has become evident that this type of field enhancement
can also dramatically raise the emission rates of Quantum dots and
quantum wells--tiny semiconductor structures that absorb and emit light--
thus increasing the efficiency and brightness of solid-state LEDs.
● Furthermore, plasmonic nanoparticles may enable researchers to develop
LEDs made of silicon. Such devices, which would be much cheaper than
conventional LEDs composed of gallium nitride or gallium arsenide, are
currently held back by their low rates of light emission.
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OTHER APPLICATIONS
● Currently the biggest application for plasmons is in gold-coated glass
biosensors, which detect when particular proteins or DNA are present.
● The big advantage of plasmons is that you can make the devices the same
size as electrical components but give them the speed of photons.
● Plasmon-carrying wires could also be made out of copper or aluminium,
like the interconnects on today's computer chips.
● They could operate at frequencies 100,000 times faster than today's
Pentium chips, without requiring thicker wiring.
○

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LIMITATIONS
1.The main limitation to plasmonics today is that plasmons tend to dissipate after only a
few millimeters, making them too short-lived to serve as a basis for computer chips,
which are a few centimeters across.

2. For sending data even longer distances, the technology would need even more
improvement. The key is using a material with a low refractive index, ideally negative,
There exists no natural material with a negative refractive index

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CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
CONCLUSION
We can conclude that plasmonics is the field that will change the future of
the world by increasing the communication through optical fiber also
plasmonics can help in different fields like medical field, the plasmonic
nanoshell will prove to be vital step in the medical field and may lead to the
cure of the cancer. We also reviewed the current status of application of
plasmonics to optical communications and demonstrated a significant
interest of the research community in developing plasmonic WDM
multiplexers. 25
FUTURE SCOPE
● The future challenge may be
● Developing high-gradient accelerators of charged particles (table-top
colliders!)
● Designing novel nanostructures that will contribute to nanoscale
optical imaging and spectroscopy of chemicals and biomolecules.
● Increasing the synergy between these technologies, plasmonics may be
able to unleash the full potential of nano scale functionality and become
the next wave of chip-scale technology
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REFERENCES
[1]Plasmonic technology and its applications by Dr S S Verma, professor in
Dept of Physics, SLIET, Longolwal, Punjab
[2] Optical fibres and fibre optic communication systems, Subir K Sarkar,
S.ChandPublications
[3] Plasmonics, the next chip-scale technology – Rashid Zia, Anu Chandran
and Mark L Brongersma from Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials,
Stanford University, Stanford, California USA
[4] Chiang, T.-Y., et al., Impact of joule heating on scaling of deep sub
micronCu/low-k interconnects. IEEE Symp. VLSI Circuits, Dig. Tech.
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THANK YOU

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