Excitation and Active Control of Charge Density Waves at Degenerately Doped PN++ Junctions

We present a semiconductor-based plasmonic electro-optic modulator based on excitation and active control of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) at the interface of degenerately doped In_0.53Ga_0.47As pn++ junctions. Set of devices, which we refer to as a surface plasmon polariton diode (SPPD), are fabricated and characterized electrically and optically. Optical characterization predicts far-field voltage aided reflectivity modulation for mid-IR wavelengths. Numerical device characterizations using self-consistent electro-optic Multiphysics model have been performed to confirm the experimental findings predicting data rates up to 1Gbits/s and 3dB bandwidth as high as 2GHz. Our findings also show that decreasing the device dimensions can potentially lead to data rates more than 50Gbits/s, thus potentially providing a pathway toward fast all-semiconductor based plasmotronic devices.