Efficient coupling of light between dielectric and HIMI plasmonic waveguide

In this letter, we investigate a tapered coupler for efficient coupling of light between a planar HIMI plasmonic and dielectric waveguides. The coupler gives an overall transmission efficiency of 98% at optical wavelength of 1550 nm. It offers long propagation length 328 mu m at the mode propagation loss of 0.0132 dB/mu m. The coupler's efficiency has also been investigated with respect to its important parameters. The entire structure occupies a footprint area of 3x1.2 mu m2 and it is CMOS compatible with on-chip applications.