Integration of Plasmonic Structures in Photonic Waveguides Enables Novel Electromagnetic Functionalities in Photonic Circuits

The development of integrated, compact, and multifunctional photonic circuits is crucial in increasing the capacity of all-optical signal processing for communications, data management, and microsystems. Plasmonics brings compactness to numerous photonic functions, but its integration into circuits is not straightforward due to insertion losses and poor mode matching. The purpose of this article is to detail the integration strategies of plasmonic structures on dielectric waveguides, and to show through some examples the variety and the application prospect of integrated plasmonic functions.