Smart Modulators Based on Electric Field-Triggering of Surface Plasmon–Polariton for Active Plasmonics

Design and properties of a plasmonic modulator in situ tunable by electric field are presented. Our design comprises the creation of periodic surface pattern on the surface of an elastic polymer supported by a piezo–substrate by excimer laser irradiation and subsequent selective coverage by silver by tilted angle vacuum evaporation. The structure creation was confirmed by AFM and FIB-SEM techniques. An external electric field is used for fine control of the polymer pattern amplitude, which tends to decrease with increasing voltage. As a result, surface plasmon–polariton excitation is quenched, leading to the less pronounced structure of plasmon response. This quenching was checked using UV–Vis spectroscopy and SERS measurements, and confirmed by numerical simulation. All methods prove the proposed functionality of the structures enabling the creation smart plasmonic materials for a very broad range of advanced optical applications.