Design and Analysis of Two Ultra-Fast All-Optical Plasmonic Dual- Band OFF-ON and Bi-Directional Switches Based on Nonlinear Kerr Materials

In this study, two ultra-fast all-optical plasmonic switches based on metal–insulator–metal (MIM) plasmonic waveguides side-coupled to cavity by stubs are proposed. The cavities are filled with a nonlinear Kerr material and the switching occurs due to the self-phase-modulation (SPM) effect. In the first structure, an OFF-ON switching functionality is achieved either by varying the incident light intensity or using the optical bistability effect at the two telecommunication windows of 1550 nm and 850 nm. In the second structure, by adding another nonlinear cavity a bi-directional switch is designed. The finite-deference time-domain (FDTD) method is used to obtain the simulation results. The proposed ultra-fast switches have significant switching mechanisms and picosecond response time (0.25ps for the OffON switch and 1.5ps for the bi-directional switch). The proposed all-optical switches have potential of significant applications in photonic integrated circuits (PICs).