Hybrid plasmonic microcavity with an air-filled gap for sensing applications

In this paper, a novel hybrid plasmonic microcavity with air-filled regions in the low-permittivity dielectric gap is proposed for sensing applications. Compared with the conventional structure with homogeneous gap, the introduced air-filled regions could improve the key modal characteristics of the hybrid mode. Simulation results reveal that this kind of hybrid microcavity maintains low loss with high quality factor ∼3062, and high field confinement with small mode volume 0.891 µm3. Moreover, in the sensing applications, this hybrid microcavity features simultaneously large refractive index sensitivity of 100 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) and relatively high quality factor of 3062. Hence, it shows that the hybrid plasmonic microcavity has potential applications in ultra-compact refractive index sensor.