On the characteristics of commonly nonideal rectangular ridge dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguides in practical fabrication processing

In this paper, four commonly nonideal structures of the ideal rectangular dielectric ridge dielectric-loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguides (DLSPPWs) in actual fabrication processing were studied. The mode effective index, propagation length, field distributions, effects of geometric deviation, lateral field confinement and figures of merit of fundamental mode were calculated at the telecommunication wavelengths. It was found that, the propagation length, the lateral field confinement and figures of merit of four nonideal rectangle ridge DLSPPWs were changed compared with the ideal rectangular dielectric ridge DLSPPW. However, the field distributions were kept, and, the characteristics of nonideal rectangle ridge DLSPPWs were affected by the geometric deviation. This study presents the characteristics of commonly nonideal rectangle ridge DLSPPWs and provides substantial information for processing and optimizing the rectangular dielectric ridge DLSPPWs in practical fabrication processing.