Surface plasmon-polariton waveguiding characteristics of metal/dielectric quasi-coplanar structures

A novel metal-dielectric structure for efficient confinement and guiding of surface plasmon-polaritons is proposed. The proposed quasi-coplanar geometry achieves a trenchlike mode confinement over a wide range of spectrum by substituting a trench structure with two patterned metal layers, which will simplify the fabrication steps significantly. Using the finite-element method, the modal characteristics and the impact of waveguide structural parameters on them were investigated.