February 25, 2014
Research out of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering is making big waves in the field of plasmonics. Post-doctoral fellow Dr. Muhammad Alam‘s 2007 paper proposing the world’s first hybrid plasmonic waveguide took the field by storm and now researchers here at the University of Toronto, as well as across Canada and the world, are building on the work. The exciting new design was manufactured and tested right here, in cleanrooms at the Toronto Nanofabrication Centre (TNFC), housed primarily in ECE.
When light illuminates a metal surface, it creates ripples in the sea of electrons in the metal—much like the ripples created by a stone thrown into a pond. These tiny waves, known as surface plasmon, can be used to trap light on the metal surface. Applications of surface plasmon—a research area known as plasmonics—holds terrific potential. Researchers are using plasmonics to combine the enormous data carrying capacity achieved by photonics with the tiny scale of modern electronics to create faster and smaller computer chips.
Plasmonics holds great promise for biology, as the concept can be applied to biosensors to trap and detect the presence of micro-scale disease markers both rapidly and accurately. Plasmonics is also finding applications in solar cells, nanolithography, optical data storage and cancer treatment. Its biggest limitation, however, is the large loss suffered by surface plasmon—as the light trapped by surface plasmon propagates along the metal surface, the power carried by light quickly dissipates as heat in the metal.
“This was a fundamental problem—no matter what metal you used, you saw loss,” says Alam. “The hybrid plasmonic waveguide can confine the light in a very small volume and at the same time bring the loss down.”
Alam’s 2007 work was the result of his PhD dissertation, co-supervised by ECE Professors Stewart Aitchison and Mo Mojahedi. His contributions have been cited more than 300 times, with 124 citations in 2013 alone. Alam was awarded the 2013 CMC Microsystems’ Douglas R. Colton Medal for Research Excellence for his significant and transformative contributions to the field of plasmonics. The award recognizes research leading to new understanding and novel developments in microsystems and related technologies. Alam was recently awarded the KNI Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship in Nanoscience from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
More information:
Marit Mitchell
Senior Communications Officer
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-7997; marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca