Strongly Confined Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Waveguiding Enabled by Planar Staggered Plasmonic Waveguides

A compact wideband antenna with high gain based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons

In this paper, a novel wideband antenna with a simple structure and low profile based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) is proposed. The structure consists of periodically modulated corrugated metal strips as transmission lines, a CPW feed, and a ground metal plate as an antenna reflector. The SSPP transmission line is used to convert quasi-TEM to SSPP mode and achieve optimal impedance matching. The prototype of the end-fire antenna has been designed and fabricated. The simulation results show that this antenna can achieve a gain of 10.19 dB, a bandwidth of 146%, and an efficiency of 90% in a wide operating band from 7 to 45 GHz. The proposed design illustrates great potential that includes high efficiency, good directivity, high gain, wide bandwidth, and easy manufacturing.

A Windmill-Shaped SSPP Waveguide for High-Efficiency Microwave and Terahertz Propagation

We propose a novel type of spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) waveguide based on windmill-shaped units for high-efficiency microwave and terahertz propagation. The dependence of terahertz dispersion characteristics on geometrical parameters of the proposed waveguide is detailed and investigated. Compared with the conventional comb-shaped and T-shaped SSPP waveguide units, the proposed windmill-shaped unit shows a lower asymptotic frequency and stronger field-confinement characteristics for the supported fundamental SSPP mode. To demonstrate the properties of the windmill-shaped SSPP waveguide, a tapered conversion is designed to connect the windmill-shaped SSPP waveguide and the microstrip for smooth momentum and impedance matching. The simulated results show that the whole waveguide has excellent transmission performance with S11 < −10 dB and S21 > −1 dB from 0 THz to 5.68 THz, as well as a large out-of-band rejection response (S21 < −80 dB). Then, a scaled microwave windmill-shaped waveguide prototype is fabricated and measured. The numerical and experimental results are in good agreement, which further validates the proposed SSPP waveguide design. The proposed waveguide has excellent microwave and terahertz propagation and rejection characteristics, which may have great potential applications in various microwave and terahertz devices and circuits.

Curved terahertz surface plasmonic waveguide devices

Strongly confined surface waves can be achieved on periodically structured metal surfaces and are known as spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). In this work, several terahertz SPP devices based on curved waveguides are demonstrated. The transmittance and bending loss of 90-degree curved spoof SPP waveguides with a radius of curvature ranging from 200 to 2300 µm are investigated to identify the regime for high transmission. A commutator is designed and experimentally demonstrated. Furthermore, coupling equations are derived and verified for efficient coupling between bend-straight waveguides and between bend-bend waveguides. The results will be of great value for future integrated terahertz plasmonic systems.

High-efficient and low-coupling spoof surface plasmon polaritons enabled by V-shaped microstrips

We propose a novel variety of V-shaped microstrips for highly efficient and strongly confined spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) propagation. We analyze the dispersion characteristics of the V-shaped SSPPs microstrip units and find that the asymptotic frequency of the dispersion curve can be significantly reduced by adding the folded stub without increasing the lateral dimension of the structure. The V-shaped microstrip possesses the advantage of being compatible with a conventional microstrip without the need for complicated and bulky mode conversion structures in other typical grooved SSPP waveguides. Then, broadband transitions with a tapered microstrip and an array of graded height V-shaped units with good impedance matching and high mode conversion efficiency are designed. The simulated and measured results demonstrate that the proposed V-shaped microstrip has excellent broadband lowpass filter characteristics with the reflection coefficient (S₁₁) less than -10 dB and the transmission coefficient (S₂₁) higher than -3 dB in the frequency range from 0 to 10.3 GHz. Furthermore, the coupling characteristics of the parallel and symmetrically arranged V-shaped microstrips are investigated. Compared to conventional parallel microstrips with a separation of 2.8 mm, the proposed parallel V-shaped microstrips with 2 mm inner-overlapping have significantly lower coupling effects in the frequency ranging from 0 to 10 GHz. The low coupling, strong field confinement, and flexible dispersion manipulation of the proposed microstrip make it possible to achieve device miniaturization and noise interference suppression, which may have great potentials in the development of various highly integrated microwave plasmonic circuits, devices, and systems.

Terahertz Spoof Surface Plasmon Polariton Waveguides: A Comprehensive Model with Experimental Verification

Spoof surface plasmon polariton waveguides are perfect candidates to enable novel, miniaturized terahertz integrated systems, which will expedite the next-generation ultra-wideband communications, high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy applications. In this paper, we introduce, for the first time, a model for the effective dielectric constant, which is the most fundamental design parameter, of the terahertz spoof surface plasmon polariton waveguides. To verify the proposed model, we design, fabricate and measure several waveguides with different physical parameters for 0.25 to 0.3 THz band. The measurement results show very good agreement with the simulations, having an average and a maximum error of 2.6% and 8.8%, respectively, achieving 10-to-30 times better accuracy than the previous approaches presented in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-time investigation of the effective dielectric constant of the terahertz spoof surface plasmon polariton waveguides, enabling accurate design of any passive component for the terahertz band.

Geometrical Dependence on the Onset of Surface Plasmon Polaritons in THz Grid Metasurfaces

The transmission response of metallo-dielectric grid metasurfaces is experimentally investigated through Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy and the corresponding effective dielectric function is retrieved. Using a lumped element model we can determine the dependence of the effective plasma frequency (the transition frequency) on the metasurface filling factor F. The change of the transition frequency vs. F spans over one order of magnitude and sets the threshold between the metamaterial (homogeneous) and the photonic crystal (diffraction-like) regime, ruling the onset of two different Surface Plasmon Polaritons, spoof and high order. Field symmetry and spatial extension of such excitations are investigated for the possible applications of THz grid metasurfaces in bio- and chemical sensing and sub-wavelength imaging.

Novel Dual-band Band-Pass Filters Based on Surface Plasmon Polariton-like Propagation Induced by Structural Dispersion of Substrate Integrated Waveguide

In this paper, we present two novel dual-band bandpass filters based on surface plasmon polariton-like (SPP-like) propagation induced by structural dispersion of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). Both filters are realized as a three-layer SIW where each layer represents a sub-SIW structure with intrinsic effective permittivity that depends on its width and filling dielectric material. The layers are designed to have effective permittivities of opposite signs in certain frequency ranges, which enables SPP-like propagation to occur at their interfaces. Since three layers can provide two distinct SPP-like propagations, the filters exhibit dual-band behaviour. A detailed theoretical and numerical analysis and numerical optimization have been used to design the filters, which were afterwards fabricated using standard printed circuit board technology. The independent choice of geometrical parameters of sub-SIWs and/or the corresponding dielectric materials provide a great freedom to arbitrarily position the passbands in the spectrum, which is a significant advantage of the proposed filters. At the same time, they meet the requirements for low-cost low-profile configuration since they are realized as SIW structures, as well as for excellent in-band characteristics and selectivity which is confirmed by the measurement results.

Microwave index engineering for slow-wave coplanar waveguides

Microwave index engineering has been investigated in order to properly design slow-wave coplanar waveguides suitable for a wide range of applications in microwave, photonics, plasmonics and metamaterials. The introduction and optimization of novel capacitive and inductive elements is proposed as a design approach to increase the microwave index while keeping the impedance close to 50 Ω to ensure the compatibility with external electronic devices. The contribution of inductive and capacitive elements and their influence on the performance of the slow-wave coplanar waveguide has been systematically analyzed. As a result, a microwave index as high as 11.6 has been experimentally demonstrated in a frequency range up to 40 GHz which is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest microwave index obtained so far in coplanar waveguides.

Plasmonic waveguide with folded stubs for highly confined terahertz propagation and concentration

We proposed a novel planar terahertz (THz) plasmonic waveguide with folded stub arrays to achieve excellent terahertz propagation performance with tight field confinement and compact size based on the concept of spoof surface plasmon polaritons (spoof SPPs). It is found that the waveguide propagation characteristics can be directly manipulated by increasing the length of the folded stubs without increasing its lateral dimension, which exhibits much lower asymptotic frequency of the dispersion relation and even tighter terahertz field confinement than conventional plasmonic waveguides with rectangular stub arrays. Based on this waveguiding scheme, a terahertz concentrator with gradual step-length folded stubs is proposed to achieve high terahertz field enhancement, and an enhancement factor greater than 20 is demonstrated. This work offers a new perspective on very confined terahertz propagation and concentration, which may have promising potential applications in various integrated terahertz plasmonic circuits and devices, terahertz sensing and terahertz nonlinear optics.