Hybrid plasmonics optical leaky wave antenna array with high gain and broadband

Abstract

Based on the plasma waveguide with four layers structure such as silicon- metal - silicon – silica, we design three types of optical leaky-wave-antennas, which have different ellipsoid hole array structure in the metal layer, such as the bus array, one-dimensional symmetric tapered array, two-dimensional symmetric tapered array. Also we explore their physical properties, including the retun loss, the insertion loss, the radiation pattern, the half power beam width (HPBW), the far field amplitude, the far filed gain and the bandwidth. When the operating wavelength is fixed at 1550 nm, these antennas appear high gain that is not less than 150 dBi, and wide bandwidth of more than 67 THz which covers most bands of the optical communication (S+→ L+). With the antenna ports filled in the air and the silicon nitride, respectively, they show different physical properties. Especially, there are great differences in the return loss, the insertion loss, radiation pattern, HPBW and bandwidth.