Abstract-Terahertz plasmonics in ferroelectric-gated graphene

Dafei Jin¹, Anshuman Kumar¹, Kin Hung Fung^1,2, Jun Xu¹, and Nicholas X. Fang¹

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
²Department of Applied Physics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China 

http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v102/i20/p201118_s1?isAuthorized=no

Inspired by recent advancement of ferroelectric-gated memories and transistors, we propose a design of ferroelectric-gated nanoplasmonic devices based on graphene sheets clamped in ferroelectric crystals. We show that the two-dimensional plasmons in graphene can strongly couple with the phonon-polaritons in ferroelectrics, leading to characteristic modal wavelength of the order of 100–200 nm at low temperature and low-THz frequencies albeit with an appreciable dissipation. By patterning the ferroelectrics into different domains, one can produce compact on-chip plasmonic waveguides, which exhibit negligible crosstalk even at 20 nm separation distance. Harnessing the memory effect of ferroelectrics, low-power operation can be achieved on these plasmonic waveguides.

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