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EC-0110 PLASMONICS "VISION FOR THE FUTURE

1.Ms.

R.Jyothi

2.Ms.

V.Sowmya

Abstract :
With the increasing quest for transporting large amonts of data at a fast speed along with miniaturization,both electronics and photonics are facing limitations.Photonic components such as fibre-optic cables can carry a lot of data but are bulky compared to electronic circuits.Electronic components such as wires and transistors can be incredibly small but carry less data A problem holding back the progress of computing is that with mismatched capacities and sizes, the two technologies are hard to combine in a circuit. Researchers can cobble them together, but a single technology that has the capacity of photonics and the smallness of electronics would be the best bridge of all Researchers are pioneering such a technology called plasmonics. Plasmonics ,also called light on a wire ,would allow transmission of data at optical frequencies along the surface of a tiny metallic wire ,despite the fact that the data travels in the form of electron density distributions rather than photons

Key Words: Electronics, photonics, components, fiber-optics, plasmonics, optical frequencies,

photons.

Conclusion:
Plasmonic circuits would be even faster and more useful if researchers could devise a "plasmonster" switch--a three-terminal plasmonic device with transistorlike properties. My lab at Caltech and other research groups have recently developed low-power versions of such a switch. If scientists can produce plasmonsters with better performance, the devices could serve as the core of an ultrafast signal-processing system, an advance that could revolutionize computing 10 to 20 years from now Plasmonics has the potential to play a unique and important role in enhancing the processing speed of future integrated circuits. The field has witnessed an explosive growth over the last few years and our knowledge base in plasmonics is rapidly expanding. As a result, the role of plasmonic devices on a chip is also becoming more well-defined .
1.II

Year ECE Geethanjali College of Engineering & Technology rjyothi_89@yahoo.com

2.II

Year ECE Geethanjali College of Engineering & Technology

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WHAT IS PLASMONICS?
Plasmons are density waves of electrons, created when light hits the surface of a metal under precise circumstances. Because these density waves are generated at optical frequencies, very small and rapid waves, they can theoretically encode a lot of information, more than what's possible for conventional electronics. Plamonics is thought to embody the strongest points of both optical and electronic data transfer . Optical data transfer, as in fibre optics , allows high bandwidth , but requires bulky "wires," or tubes with reflective interiors. Electronic data transfer operates at frequencies inferior to fiber optics, but only requires tiny wires

Surface Plasmons:
are those plasmons that are confined to surfaces and that interact strongly with light resulting in apolariton. 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 insurface enhanced raman spectroscopy and in explaining anomalies in diffraction from metal (anomaly), 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) More recently surface plasmons have been used to control colours of materials. This is possible since controlling the material's surface shape controls the types of surface plasmons that can couple to it and propagate across it. This in turn controls the interaction of light with the surface. These effects are illustrated by the historic stained glass which adorn medieval cathedrals. In this case, the color is given by metal nanoparticles of a fixed size which interacts with the optical field to give the glass its vibrant color. In modern science, these effects have been engineered for both visible light and micro wave radiation . Much research goes on first in the microwave range because at this wavelength material surfaces can be produced mechanically as the patterns tend to be of the order a few cms. To produce optical range surface plasmon effects involves producing surfaces which have features <400nm This is much more difficult and has only recently become possible to do in any reliable or available way . Surface plasmons are very sensitive to the properties of the materials on which they propagate. This has led to their use to measure the thickness of monolayers on colloid films, such as screening and quantifying protein binding events. Companies such as Biacore have commercialized instruments which operate on these principles. Optical surface plasmons are being investigated with a view to improve makeup by among others.

Why is it so interesting?
"Plasmon waves are interesting because they are at optical frequencies. The higher the frequency of the wave, the more information you can transport." Optical frequencies are about 100,000 times greater than the frequency of today's electronic microprocessors.

Chip scale electronics:

Plasmon waves behave on metals much like light waves behave in glass, meaning that plasmonic engineers can employ all the same ingenious trickssuch as multiplexing, or sending multiple wavesthat photonic engineers use to cram more data down a cable. Meanwhile, because plasmonic components can be crafted from the same materials chipmakers use today, Scientist are hopeful that they can make all the devices needed to route light around a processor or other kind of chip. These would include plasmon sources, detectors and wires, which the lab already has made, as well as splitters and even transistors.

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While an all-plasmonic chip might be feasible someday, Plasmonic wires will act as high-traffic freeways on chips with otherwise conventional electronics. Local arrays of electronic transistors would carry out the switching necessary for computation, but when a lot of data needs an express lane to travel from one section of a chip to another, electronic bits could be converted to plasmon waves, sent along a plasmonic wire and converted back to electronic bits at their destination. The development of chip-scale electronics and photonics has led to remarkable data processing and transport capabilities that permeate almost every facet of our lives. Plasmonics is an exciting new device technology that has recently emerged. It exploits the unique optical properties of metallic nanostructures to enable routing and manipulation of light at the nanoscale. A tremendous synergy can be attained by integrating plasmonic, electronic, and conventional dielectric photonic devices on the same chip and taking advantage of the strengths of each technology. The ever-increasing demand for faster information transport and processing capabilities is undeniable. Our data-hungry society has driven enormous progress in the Si electronics industry and we have witnessed a continuous progression towards smaller, faster, and more efficient electronic devices over the last five decades. The scaling of these devices has also brought about a myriad of challenges. Currently, two of the most daunting problems preventing significant increases in processor speed are thermal and signal delay issues associated with electronic interconnection It is important to realize that, with the latest advances in electromagnetic simulations and current complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible fabrication techniques, a variety of functional plasmonic structures can be designed and fabricated in a Si foundry right now. Current Si-based integrated circuit technology already uses nanoscale metallic structures, such as Cu and Al interconnects, to route electronic signals between transistors on a chip. This mature processing technology can thus be used to our advantage in integrating plasmonic devices with their electronic and dielectric photonic counterparts. In some cases, plasmonic waveguides may even perform a dual function and simultaneously carry both optical and electrical signals, giving rise to exciting new capabilities

Applied plasmonics:
It is a fabless semiconductor company, has invented a practical, mass-market use for devices based on surface plasmons. The new technology employs nano-antennas manufactured in a single layer to generate visible light. Our mission is to create selected, innovative, products that exploit surface plasmons. We develop intellectual property that enables the design, development, and fabrication of light emission devices on standard CMOS silicon, and other substrates, by exploiting the lithographic capabilities of mainstream semiconductor processing in combination with vacuum microelectronics. Our devices are the first to permit efficient light generation on a CMOS process without the use of specialty processes. Light is generated without the need for external light sources creates innovative intellectual property that enables the design, development, and fabrication of light emission devices on standard CMOS silicon, and other substrates, by exploiting the lithographic capabilities of mainstream semiconductor processing in combination with vacuum microelectronics.

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Optical-Fiber Nanotechnology

Optical fibers now span the globe, guiding light Signals that convey voluminous streams of voice communications and vast amounts of data. This gargantuan capacity has led some researchers to prophesy that photonic devices--which channel and manipulate visible light and other electromagnetic waves--could someday replace electronic circuits in microprocessors and other computer chips. Unfortunately, the size and performance of photonic devices are constrained by the diffraction limit; because of interference between closely spaced light waves, the width of an optical fiber carrying them must be at least half the light's wavelength inside the material. For chipbased optical signals, which will most likely employ near-infrared wavelengths of about 1,500 nanometers (billionths of a meter), the minimum width is much larger than the smallest electronic devices currently in use; some transistors in silicon integrated circuits, for instance, have features smaller than 100 nanometers. Recently, however, scientists have been working on a new technique for transmitting optical signals through minuscule nanoscale structures. In the 1980s researchers experimentally confirmed that directing light waves at the interface between a metal and a dielectric (a nonconductive material such as air or glass) can, under the right circumstances, induce a resonant interaction between the waves and the mobile electrons at the surface of the metal. (In a conductive metal, the electrons are not strongly attached to individual atoms or molecules.) In other words, the oscillations of electrons at the surface match those of the electromagnetic field outside the metal. The result is the generation of surface plasmons--density waves of electrons that propagate along the interface like the ripples that spread across the surface of a pond after you throw a stone into the water.

Nanoshells Cancer treatment :

The potential uses of plasmonic devices go far beyond computing, however. Scientists have developed structures called nanoshells that consist 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; 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 infra red). This phenomenon has turned nanoshells into a promising tool for cancer treatment . Scientists injected plasmonic nanoshells into the bloodstream of mice with cancerous tumors and found that the particles were nontoxic. What is more, the nanoshells tended to embed themselves in the

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rodents' cancerous tissues rather than the healthy ones because more blood was circulated to the fast-growing tumors. Fortunately, human and animal tissues are transparent to radiation at certain infrared wavelengths. When the researchers directed near-infrared laser light through the mice's skin and at the tumors, the resonant absorption of energy in the embedded nanoshells raised the temperature of the cancerous tissues from about 37 degrees Celsius to about 45 degrees C. The photothermal heating killed the cancer cells while leaving the surrounding healthy tissue unharmed. In the mice treated with nanoshells, all signs of cancer disappeared within 10 days; in the control groups, the tumors continued to grow rapidly. Houston-based Nanospectra Biosciences is currently seeking permission from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct clinical trials of nanoshell therapy in patients with head and neck cancer.

Conclusion:
Just as lithography is now used to imprint circuit patterns on silicon chips, a similar process could mass-produce minuscule plasmonic devices with arrays of narrow dielectric stripes and gaps. These arrays would guide the waves of positive and negative charge on the metal surface; the alternating charge densities would be very much akin to the alternating current traveling along an ordinary wire. But because the frequency of an optical signal is so much higher than that of an electrical one--more than 400,000 gigahertz versus 60 hertz--the plasmonic circuit would be able to carry much more data. Moreover, because electrical charge does not travel from one end of a plasmonic circuit to another--the electrons bunch together and spread apart rather than streaming in a single direct ion--the device is not subject to resistance and capacitance effects that limit the data-carrying capacity of integrated circuits with electrical interconnects. Plasmonic circuits would be even faster and more useful if researchers could devise a "plasmonster" switch--a three-terminal plasmonic device with transistorlike properties. My lab at Caltech and other research groups have recently developed low-power versions of such a switch. If scientists can produce plasmonsters with better performance, the devices could serve as the core of an ultrafast signal-processing system, an advance that could revolutionize computing 10 to 20 years from now Plasmonics has the potential to play a unique and important role in enhancing the processing speed of future integrated circuits. The field has witnessed an explosive growth over the last few years and our knowledge base in plasmonics is rapidly expanding. As a result, the role of plasmonic devices on a chip is also becoming more well-defined .

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