CMOS-Compatible Electronic-Plasmonic Transducers Based on Plasmonic Tunnel Junctions and Schottky Diodes

Abstract

To develop methods to generate, manipulate, and detect plasmonic signals by electrical means with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible materials is essential to realize on-chip electronic-plasmonic transduction. Here we demonstrate electrically driven, CMOS-compatible electronic-plasmonic transducers with Al-AlOX-Cu tunnel junctions as the excitation source of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and Si-Cu Schottky diodes as the detector of SPPs, connected via plasmonic strip waveguides of Cu. Remarkably, our electronic-plasmonic transducers exhibit overall transduction efficiency of 1.85 ±0.03%, five times higher than previously reported transducers with two tunnel junctions ( MIM-MIM transducers) where SPPs are detected based on optical rectification. Our result establishes a new platform to convert electronic signals to plasmonic signals via electrical means, paving the way towards CMOS-compatible plasmonic components.