Triangular metal wedges for subwavelength plasmon-polariton guiding at telecom wavelengths

We report on subwavelength plasmon-polariton guiding by triangular metal wedges at telecom wavelengths. A high-quality fabrication procedure for making gold wedge waveguides, which is also mass-production compatible offering large-scale parallel fabrication of plasmonic components, is developed. Using scanning near-field optical imaging at the wavelengths in the range of 1.43-1.52 mu m, we demonstrate low-loss (propagation length similar to 120 mu m) and well- confined (mode width. 1.3 mu m) wedge plasmon-polariton guiding along triangular 6-mu m-high and 70.5 angle gold wedges. Experimental observations are consistent with numerical simulations performed with the multiple multipole and finite difference time domain methods. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America.