Bismuth ferrite for active control of surface plasmon polariton modes

Abstract

We propose and investigate several layouts of metal-insulator-metal waveguide with active core which can be utilized for dynamic switching in photonic integrated circuits. The active material, bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3), is sandwiched between metal plates and changes its refractive index through partial switching of ferroelectric domain orientation under applied voltage. Both phase and amplitude modulations are envisaged.