Electrical Tuning of Surface Plasmon Polariton Propagation in Graphene–Nanowire Hybrid Structure

We demonstrate a dynamic surface plasmonic modulation based on graphene–nanowire (grapheme−NW) hybrid structures in the visible light range. A static modulation depth of as high as 0.07 dB/μm has been achieved experimentally. Through careful simulation and systematical experimental investigation, we found that the dual-confinement effect of charge density and electromagnetic energy around the vicinity of the NW will dramatically enhance the light–matter interaction and increase the Fermi level shifting, which are the key roles for bringing the optical response of the device to the visible range. The carrier concentration near the vicinity of a Ag NW is estimated to reach 0.921 × 1014 cm–2 after applying more than 25 V voltages, which is enough to shift the Fermi level for visible light. Furthermore, the modulation behaviors near the Dirac point of monolayer graphene and the singularity of gap-induced bilayer graphene are investigated. Calculated optical conductivity as a function of Fermi level predicts a minimum value near the Dirac point, which is consistent with the experimental results.