A hybrid long-range plasmonic waveguide with sub-wavelength confinement

A symmetric three dielectric layer stack with a low–high–low dielectric constant distribution is proposed to replace the conventional single dielectric layer on both sides of the thin metal layer to guide the long range surface plasmonic polaritons. Our simulation result shows that the new design is capable of providing more compact modal confinement as well as low loss transmission due to the coupling between the plasmonic and dielectric waveguide modes.