4844
24, DECEMBER 15, 2014
High Transmission Efficiency Wavelength Division
Multiplexer Based on Metal–Insulator–Metal
Plasmonic Waveguides
Yaw-Dong Wu
Abstract—A high transmission efficiency multichannel
wavelength division multiplexer (WDM) based on metal–
insulator–metal (MIM) plasmonic waveguides with ring resonators
is proposed and investigated numerically. The two-dimensional
finite-difference time-domain method was used to simulate the
proposed structure. The transmission efficiency of each channel is
higher than 86.74%. The simulation results show that the proposed
MIM waveguide with ring resonators could really function as a
WDM. It would be a potential key component in the applications
of the all-optical signal procession and communication systems.
Index Terms—Metal–insulator–metal plasmonic waveguides,
ring-resonator, surface plasmon polariton, wavelength division
multiplexer.
I. INTRODUCTION
N recent years, the use of surface plasmon waveguide struc-
I ture to design all-optical devices gained popularity. Surface
plasmons exist between metal and dielectric of surface electro-
magnetic waves. One of the important surface plasmon polariton
(SPP) characteristics is that electromagnetic wave can couple
with propagating free electron oscillation at the metal-dielectric
interfaces. SPPs have promising application on the devices of
highly integrated optical circuits because they overcome the
conventional diffraction limit and can manipulate light on sub-
wavelength scales [1]–[3]. The metal-insulator-metal (MIM)
structure consists of a dielectric waveguide and two metallic
claddings, which strongly confine the incident light in the insu-
lator region [4]. Some devices based on the MIM waveguides
have been studied numerically and experimentally, for example,
the filters based on ring resonators [5], tooth-shaped plasmonic
waveguide filters [6]–[9], nanodisk resonator [10] and Y-shaped
combiners [11]. MIM waveguides are prospective for the de-
sign of nanoscale all-optical devices for strong localization, as
well as relatively simple structure. Nowadays, there are many
researchers have proposed using surface plasmonic waveguides
to design wavelength-division-multiplexer (WDM) [12]–[22].
WDM is a technique that can transmit different wavelengths
in both directions over a single fiber and multiplexes them
accordingly. A WDM system can be divided into transmitter
Manuscript received April 30, 2014; revised July 16, 2014; accepted Septem-
ber 20, 2014. Date of publication September 26, 2014; date of current version
November 25, 2014. This work was supported in part by the National Science
Council of Taiwan under Grant NSC 101-2221-E-151-077.
The author is with the Electronic Engineering Department, National Kaoh-
siung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan (e-mail:
ydwu@cc.kuas.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JLT.2014.2359938
0733-8724 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO.
of wavelength division multiplexer and receiver of wavelength
division demultiplexer. Recently some authors have proposed
WDM based on MIM plasmonic waveguide resonators. Guoxi
Wang et al. [12], [13] proposed tunable multi-channel WDM
based on MIM plasmonic nanodisk resonators at telecommu-
nication regime and nanoplasmonic wavelength demultiplexing
based on MIM waveguides. They used nanodisk and rectan-
gular resonators to design multi-channel WDM structures. The
transmission efficiency is about 50–60%. Jin Tao et al. [14],
[17] proposed a wavelength demultiplexing structure based on
MIM plasmonic nanocapillary resonators. The transmission ef-
ficiency is about 30–50%. And Feifei Hu et al. [18] proposed
WDM structure based on arrayed plasmonic MIM slot cavi-
ties. The transmission efficiency is about 50–75%. In this paper,
the ring resonators and the MIM plasmonic waveguide structure
were used to design a high transmission efficiency multi-channel
WDM waveguide structures. The 2D FDTD simulation results
show that the proposed MIM waveguide with ring resonators
could really function as a WDM. The transmission efficiency
is higher than 86.74%.
II. ANALYSIS
In general, the interface between semi-infinite materials hav-
ing positive and negative dielectric constants can effectively
guide transverse magnetic (TM) surface waves. Because the
width of the MIM plasmonic waveguide is much smaller than
the wavelength, only the fundamental TM (TM0 ) waveguide
mode can propagate. The dispersion equation for TM mode in
the waveguide is given by [23]:
 
kd
εd km + εm kd tanh w =0 (1)
2
where kd and km are defined as: kd = (β 2 − εd k02 ) 2 and
1
1
km = (β 2 − εm k02 ) 2 . εd and εm are dielectric constants of the
insulator and the metal, respectively. k0 = 2π/λ is the free-
space wave vector. The propagation constant β is represented
as effective index neff = β/k0 of the waveguide for SPP. In
the paper, the dielectric is assumed to be air with εd = 1, and
the metal to be silver. The dielectric constants εm of silver can
be calculated by Drude model [24]:
ωp2
εm (ω) = ε∞ − (2)
ω(ω + iγ)
Here ε∞ stands for the dielectric constant at infinite angular
frequency with the value of 3.7, ωp = 1.38 × 1016 Hz is the bulk
WU: HIGH TRANSMISSION EFFICIENCY WDM BASED ON MIM PLASMONIC WAVEGUIDES
Fig. 1. (a) Channel drop filter structure realized in MIM waveguides with a
ring resonator. (b) The normalized transmission spectrum of the channel drop
filter.
plasma frequency, which represents the natural frequency of the
oscillations of free conduction electrons, γ = 2.73 × 1013 Hz
is the damping frequency of the oscillations, and ω is the an-
gular frequency of the incident electromagnetic radiation. The
SPPs are excited with inputting a TM-polarized plane wave. The
transmission of the structure is defined as T = Ptr /Pin [9]. Pin
is the total incident power and Ptr is the transmission power.
Two straight waveguides and a ring resonator were used
to construct a channel drop filter based on MIM wave-
guide structure, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The parameters of
the structure are set to be the waveguide width w = 50 nm,
the gap distance between the ring resonator and the straight
waveguide d = 45 nm, and the outer radius of the ring res-
onator R = 205 nm. For resonance of a ring resonator to take
place, the circumference of the ring must be an integer multiple
of the wavelength of the light. And the mode number must be a
positive integer for resonance to take place. When the incident
light contains multiple wavelengths, only the resonant wave-
lengths can propagate through the ring resonator fully. Hence
a ring resonator will have several resonant modes, as shown
in Fig. 1(b). When the optical signals are launched at the in-
put port, most optical signals will propagate directly through
the output port B and only the optical signals with certain fre-
quencies will be dropped from the output port A by the ring
resonators. By using the ring resonator system which will drop
some frequencies to the drop waveguides, the incident light will
propagate along the bus waveguide to the resonator system. The
ring resonator was used to drop out the optical signals with cer-
tain frequencies in this structure. A 2D FDTD method is used
4845
Fig. 2. Transmission spectra for different radii of the ring resonator with
d = 45 nm and w = 50 nm.
Fig. 3. Transmitted-peak wavelength of the filter versus the radius of the ring
resonator.
to simulate the proposed structure, with the perfectly matched
layer absorbing boundary conditions at all boundaries of
the simulation domain. The grid sizes are chosen to be
Δx = Δy = 5 nm and Δt = Δx/2c [9], [25]. The transmission
spectrum of the structure is shown in Fig. 1(b). Four transmis-
sion peaks at output port A can be obtained. Three transmission
peaks are in visible light range and only one is in infrared
light range. In this paper, the wavelength of the incident light
is in the infrared range. From simulation result, one resonance
peak at the wavelength λ = 1554 nm is located in the range of
1250 ∼ 1600 nm, and the corresponding maximum transmis-
sion efficiency is 38.2%. The quality factor at 1554 nm is 777 in
this case (d = 45 nm). Fig. 2 shows the transmission response
of SPPs corresponding to different radius. As the radii of ring
resonators increase the transmitted-peak wavelengths also in-
crease. As shown in Fig. 3, it shows a nearly linear relationship
between the radii of ring resonators and the wavelength dropping
range. The dropped central wavelengths are shown in Table I.
Fig. 4(a) shows the transmission spectrum for the ring res-
onator with R = 205 nm and w = 50 nm for the different gap
distance d. When the gap distance d is 25 nm, one resonance
peak at the wavelength (λ) 1561 nm, the corresponding max-
imum transmittance is about 40.64%, and the quality factor is
260. For other gap distance d = 30, 35, 40 and 45 nm, the
4846 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 32, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

TABLE I
THE WAVELENGTH OF DROPPING RANGE CORRESPOND TO DIFFERENT
RESONATOR SIZES

Ring resonator of size Drop wavelength of range (nm) Central wavelength (nm)

R = 175 nm 1296–1300 1298

R = 180 nm 1339–1342 1340
R = 185 nm 1382–1384 1383
R = 190 nm 1425–1427 1426
R = 195 nm 1468–1470 1469
R = 200 nm 1510–1514 1511
R = 205 nm 1554–1556 1555

Fig. 6. Transmission spectra for different reflective length L with d = 45 nm,

w = 50 nm, (a) R = 205 nm. (b) R = 177 nm.

The transmission spectrum is shown in Fig. 5(b). With the same

Fig. 4. (a) Transmission spectra for different gap distance d with R = 205 nm
and w = 50 nm. (b) Transmitted-peak wavelength versus the gap distance d.
Fig. 5. (a) Channel drop filter structure with reflector. (b) Transmission spectra
with reflector and without reflector.
corresponding resonance peak wavelength at λ = 1557, 1554,
1553, 1552 nm and the respective maximum transmittances are
39.6%, 38.2%, 33.5%, 31.2%, and the quality factor is 389, 777,
1035 and 1410 respectively. Fig. 4(b) shows that by adjusting
the gap distance, the peak wavelength will be affected slightly.
By properly adjusting the gap distance, the quality factor can be
greatly improved.
However, the transmission efficiency can’t be improved at
all. To improve the transmission efficiency, a reflector was in-
troduced in Port B, as shown in Fig. 5(a). The reflective length
L is the length between a reflector and the drop waveguides.
parameters, transmission efficiency of the case with reflector
is higher than that of the case without reflector. In the case of
without the reflector, the peak wavelength at 1554 nm and the
corresponding maximum transmittance is 38.2%. In the case of
with the reflector, the peak wavelength at 1554 nm and the cor-
responding maximum transmittance is 51.6%. By introducing
a reflector, the transmission efficiency can be increased about
13%. But this is still not high enough, the reflective length L
can be properly adjusted to enhance the transmission efficiency.
For the proposed multi-channel drop filter, high channel drop
efficiency can be achieved if the resonators are properly located
from the reflector [26]. As shown in Fig 6(a), the reflective
length was adjusted from 0 nm to 300 nm with R = 205 nm
and d = 45 nm. The numerical results show that the optimum
transmission efficiencies at L = 300 nm, the peak wavelength
at 1552 nm and the corresponding maximum transmittance is
95.87%. As shown in Fig 6(b), the reflective length was adjusted
from 0 nm to 300 nm with R = 177 nm, and d = 45 nm. The
numerical results show that the optimum transmission efficien-
cies at L = 100 nm, the peak wavelength at 1312 nm and the
corresponding maximum transmittance is 95.23%.
A novel eight-channel wavelength division multiplexer was
proposed based on ring resonators in MIM waveguide structures,
as shown in Fig. 7(a). Before designing the multichannel WDM,
the influence between two ring resonators must be investigated.
The MIM waveguide structure consists of two ring resonators
with different radii R1 and R2 was used to investigate the in-
fluence between two ring resonators, as shown in Fig. 7(b).
The separation length Li is an important parameter, which
introduces a phase difference between the two ring resonators
thus influencing the transmission characteristics of the pro-
posed structure [27]. The parameters of the structure are cho-
sen as L = 150 nm, R1 = 195 nm, R2 = 197 nm, w = 50 nm
and d = 45 nm. The transmission spectra for different L1 are
shown in Fig. 8(a)–(f). As the simulation results shown above,
L1 was chosen as the value 500 nm for best results, because
both the first and the second ring resonators have similar trans-
mission efficiency. Next, the same method was used to inves-
tigate the influence between each two ring resonators. The op-
timal parameters of the proposed WDM structure are chosen
WU: HIGH TRANSMISSION EFFICIENCY WDM BASED ON MIM PLASMONIC WAVEGUIDES
Fig. 7. (a) Schematics of the proposed eight-channel coarse wavelength divi-
sion multiplexer based on ring resonators in MIM waveguide structures. (b) The
MIM waveguide structure consists of two ring resonators with different radii
R 1 and R 2 .
Fig. 8. Transmission spectra for fixed L = 150 nm and R 1 = 195 nm,
R 2 = 197 nm with different L 1 (a) 400 nm (b) 450 nm (c) 500 nm (d) 550 nm
(e) 600 nm (f) 650 nm.
4847
Fig. 9. Transmission spectra of the eight-channel WDM.
as R1 = 195 nm, R2 = 197 nm, R3 = 200 nm, R4 = 202 nm,
R5 = 204 nm, R6 = 207 nm, R7 = 209 nm, R8 = 211 nm,
L = 150 nm, L1 = 500 nm, L2 = 450 nm, L3 = 550 nm, L4 =
550 nm, L5 = 550 nm, L6 = 550 nm, L7 = 600 nm, w =
50 nm and d = 45 nm. The transmission spectrum of the
proposed WDM structure is shown in Fig. 9. The numeri-
cal results show that the optimum transmission efficiencies
of the eight output channels are 90.58%, 94.38%, 86.74%,
98.24%, 94.42%, 89.9%, 90.53% and 96.85%, respectively.
Fig. 10(a)–(h) show the field transmissions for each chan-
nel of the proposed WDM structure with wavelengths λ1 =
1470 nm, λ2 = 1490 nm, λ3 = 1510 nm, λ4 = 1530 nm, λ5 =
1550 nm, λ6 = 1570 nm, λ7 = 1590 nm, and λ8 = 1610 nm,
respectively.
III. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a high transmission efficiency multi-channel
WDM structure based on the MIM plasmonic waveguides with
ring resonators has been successfully proposed. The numeri-
cal results show that the larger radii of the ring resonators, the
longer wavelength peak wavelength shifts. According to this
result, the desired wavelength can be simply filtered out by ad-
justing the radii of the ring resonators. The quality factor of
the filter can also be controlled by changing the gap distance.
The numerical results show that as the gap distance increases, the
quality factor also increases. A reflector was also introduced to
increase the transmission efficiency that can be increased about
13.4%. By applying above methods, a tunable eight-channel
WDM with the channel spacing of 20 nm from the wavelengths
λ = 1470 ∼ 1610 nm was proposed. The transmission effi-
ciency of each channel is higher than 85%. The simulation
results show that the proposed MIM waveguide with ring res-
onators could really function as a WDM. It would be a poten-
tial key component in the applications of the all-optical signal
procession and communication systems.
4848
Fig. 10 Field distributions for each channel of the proposed WDM structure
at wavelengths (a) λ1 = 1470 nm, (b) λ2 = 1490 nm, (c) λ3 = 1510 nm, (d)
λ4 = 1530 nm, (e) λ5 = 1550 nm, (f) λ6 = 1570 nm, (g) λ7 = 1590 nm, and
(h) λ8 = 1610 nm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank Yung-Ta Hsueh for his con-
structive discussion and help.
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Yaw-Dong Wu was born in Taiwan in 1963. He received the B.S. degree
in electronic physics from the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu
City, Taiwan, in 1987, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-
gineering from the National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung City, Tai-
wan, in 1988 and 1992, respectively. In 1999, he became the Leader of the
Computer and Communication Research Center, National Kaohsiung Uni-
versity of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung City. He is currently a Professor
at the Department of Electronic Engineering, National Kaohsuing Univer-
sity of Applied Sciences. His main research interests include plasmonic
waveguide devices, photonic crystal devices, nonlinear integrated optics and
metamaterials.