Improving the Performance of All-Optical Logic Gates Based on Metal-Insulator-Metal Heterogeneous Plasmonic Waveguide by Kerr Nonlinearity Effect

Abstract In this paper, the nonlinear effect of Kerr on increasing the efficiency of multi-channel alloptical metal-insulator-metal (MIM) logic gates with heterogeneous metals is investigated. In this study, linear interference between surface plasmonic polariton modes has been employed. The performance of OR, AND, XOR and NOR gates are numerically analyzed by the finite element method (FEM). A structure with fixed physical dimensions can manage several basic logic functions. By applying optical signals to various input ports in the proposed structure, we can implement the logic functions of OR, AND and XOR. The NOR logic gate can be established by the addition of a control optical signal. On the other hand, to improve the level difference between the logic states of "0" and "1" in the waveguides, heterogeneous metals as well as Kerr material with non-linear effect have been employed. It has been shown that the nonlinear material of Kerr increases the difference of field intensity between logic levels of "0" and "1" are 77V/m for OR gate, 133V/m for AND gate, 89V/m for XOR gate and 138V/m for NOR gate. The proposed all-optical logic gate has a simple and compact arrangement and it can be applied to many nanophotonic components used in optical communication networks.