Ultracompact AZO-based TE-pass and TM-pass hybrid plasmonic polarizers

Abstract

Ultracompact transverse electric (TE)- and transverse magnetic (TM)-pass polarizers based on a hybrid plasmonic silicon-on-insulator platform are reported and studied. The aluminum-doped zinc oxide is used as an alternative plasmonic material in the proposed structures due to its attractive advantages, including high optical tunability, high thermal stability, and low ohmic loss. The numerical results show that the TE-pass polarizer of a compact device length of 3 μm has 20.6 dB extinction ratio (ER) and 0.21 dB insertion loss (IL) at an operating wavelength of 1.55 μm. However, the TM-pass polarizer achieves 22 dB ER and 0.11 dB IL at only 1 μm device length. Further, the fabrication tolerance of the proposed polarizers is studied, which ensures the high robustness of the suggested designs to the fabrication errors.