A design of Si-based nanoplasmonic structure as an antenna and reception amplifier

for visible light communication

J. H. Yan, Z. Y. Lin, P. Liu, and G. W. Yang
Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 116, 154307 (2014); doi: 10.1063/1.4898684
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4898684
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/116/15?ver=pdfcov
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 116, 154307 (2014)

A design of Si-based nanoplasmonic structure as an antenna and reception

amplifier for visible light communication
J. H. Yan, Z. Y. Lin, P. Liu, and G. W. Yanga)
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Institute of Optoelectronic and
Functional Composite Materials, Nanotechnology Research Center, School of Physics & Engineering,
Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, Guangdong, Peoples Republic of China

(Received 11 September 2014; accepted 8 October 2014; published online 20 October 2014)
Visible light communication has been widely investigated due to its larger bandwidth and higher
bit rate, and it can combine with the indoor illumination system that makes it more convenient to
carry out. Receiving and processing the visible light signal on chip request for nanophotonics
devices performing well. However, conventional optical device cannot be used for light-on-chip
integration at subwavelength dimensions due to the diffraction limit. Herein, we propose a design
of Si-based nanoplasmonic structure as an antenna and reception amplifier for visible light communication based on the interaction between Si nanoparticle and Au nanorod. This device integrates
the unique scattering property of high-refractive index dielectric Si nanoparticles, whose scattering
spectrum is dependent on the particle size, with the localized surface plasmon resonance of Au
nanorod. We calculated the spectra collected by plane detector and near field distribution of nanostructure, and theoretically demonstrate that the proposed device can act as good receiver, amplifier
and superlens during the visible light signal receiving and processing. Besides, unlike some other
designs of nanoantenna devices focused less on how to detect the signals, our hybrid nanoantenna
can realize the transfer between the scattering source and the detector effectively by Au nanorod
waveguides. These findings suggest that the designed nanoplasmonic structure is expected to be
used in on-chip nanophotonics as antenna, spectral splitter and demultiplexer for visible light comC 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4898684]
munication. V
I. INTRODUCTION

Information processing based on all-optical communication system has many advantages over that based on electronic systems due to high processing speed and low energy
loss.1 Nanoantenna working as visible light signal receiver
as well as spectral splitter plays a key role in the all-optical
communication,2 while it can also be used to realize logical
operation and photon sensing.3,4 As for manipulation in the
visible light at the subwavelength dimensions, traditional optical components such as filters and lenses cannot be used
anymore because of the diffraction limit. Generally, electromagnetic radiation would excite metals such as gold and silver to create a coherent oscillation of the surface electrons,
which is called to be localized surface plasmon resonance
(LSPR), leading to the electromagnetic-field enhancement.5
This localized field can break through the diffraction limit,
so we can design some nanophotonic devices such as nanowaveguide and nanoantenna to achieve light-on-chip integration. Nanoplasmonic devices have many advantages, for
example, metal nanorods can act as nanolens for subwavelength imaging via surface plasmons propagating,6,7 and
metal nanowires serving as Fabry-Perot-type plasmon resonators can constitute a basic component for wavelength selectivity.8 However, as a nanoantenna performing in the
visible wavelengths, nanoplasmonic devices suffer from the

a)

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail:

stsygw@mail.sysu.edu.cn

0021-8979/2014/116(15)/154307/7/$30.00

intrinsic losses for the relatively high imaginary part of

permittivity.9
One method to overcome this shortcoming is to use
high-refractive index dielectric materials such as silicon
nanoparticle. Unlike metal nanoparticles, silicon nanoparticle has both strong electric and magnetic dipole resonances.
The interaction of magnetic and electric dipole decides that
their scattering property is dependent on wavelength.1013
The scattering spectra of silicon nanospheres with radius
from 100 to 200 nm has two peaks (electric dipole resonance
and magnetic dipole resonance) in the visible wavelength.
The peak shift is sensitive to size change and scattering
direction. Therefore, this unique property makes silicon
nanoparticle to be a good nanoantennas at the visible wavelength for light on-chip integration.14 However, the scattering field of a single silicon nanoparticle is almost
everywhere divergent. In order to receive the signal radiating
from silicon nanoparticle effectively, all-dielectric optical
nanoantennas were reported.15,16
In this contribution, we propose a design of the Si-based
nanoplasmonic structure as an antenna and reception amplifier
for visible light communication based on the interaction
between Si nanoparticle and Au nanorod. Importantly, this device combines the unique scattering property of highrefractive index dielectric nanoparticle and the LSPR of metal
nanorod together. In theoretical, we demonstrate that the proposed device can selectively receive the visible light signals
with several particular wavelengths, and simultaneously realize the signal amplification and focusing. Although the hybrid
metal-semiconductor structures have been proposed in some

116, 154307-1

C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

V

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J. Appl. Phys. 116, 154307 (2014)

core-shell scatterers,1719 they mainly focused on the optical

properties and expounded how the hybrid structure influences
the scattering properties but barely mention how to design a
device to collect and propagate the scattering signals. As for
our Si-Au plasmonic structure, Au nanorod can perform as a
waveguide connecting the Si nanosphere and the detector and
is much easier to achieve light on-chip in the future.
Therefore, these results suggest this novel nanoplasmonic
structure as a nanoantenna that can perform as a spectral splitting or demultiplexer on light on-chip integration for visible
light communication.
II. THEORY AND RESULTS
A. Scattering of Si nanosphere

When the incident light interacts with a Si nanosphere,

the low absorption dielectric particle can act as a scattering
source supporting strong Mie resonance. In the far field, the
electric field intensity of the sphere can be expressed as the
superposition of the electric fields generated by electric
dipole, magnetic dipole, electric quadrupole, and magnetic
quadrupole. In this case, the finite-difference time-domain
(FDTD) method performing by FDTD Solutions 8.6.0
(Lumerical Solutions, Inc.) is used to calculate the scattering
spectra and the near field distribution. Considering that both
the Mie theory and the FDTD methods are based on the
Maxwells equation, they are the same in nature. So we
choose the FDTD method to simulate and analysis the properties of Si nanosphere. The perfectly matched layer (PML)
boundary conditions were used and was set to a size of 0.5 
0.5  1.4 lm3 . The mesh override region was set to 4 nm.
And the complex dielectric constants of gold and silicon
were taken from the literature of Palik. We simulate a Si
nanosphere with diameter of 190 nm under the radiation of
linear polarized plane wave in the visible wavelength range
as shown in Fig. 1(a), and then collect and integrate the forward scattering intensity via a 2D frequency-domain field
and power monitor located 100 nm under the nanosphere.
Clearly, we can see that there are two main peaks in the
range of 300900 nm. The peak in the red side is related to
the magnetic dipole resonance and the other is caused by the
electric dipole resonance. The magnetic dipole resonance
peak has the maxima in the spectral range, which means that
the magnetic dipole resonance is stronger than the electric
dipole resonance for Si nanosphere. To confirm silicon nanospheres low loss scattering property, we also simulated the
scattering spectral of the Au nanosphere with the same size.
As expected, we find that the magnetic peak is about 4 times
the intensity of Au nanoparticles plasmonic peak, and the
electric peak is about twice time the intensity. The higher
order resonance such as quadrupole can also be observed in
Fig. 1(a), but we can neglect it for the intensity is relatively
low.
When increasing the size of Si nanospheres, both the
magnetic dipole resonance peak and the electric dipole resonance peak are red shifted based on Mie theory. The peak
wavelength change over sphere diameter is plotted in Fig.
1(b). The relationship is simply linear, so the function relationship can be describe as

FIG. 1. Scattering properties of single Si sphere. (a) Forward scattering intensity spectral detected by a planar detector. The red box reveals the direction of electric dipole moment and the blue box reveals the direction of
magnetic dipole moment. (b) Dependence of the peak wavelength of the
magnetic and electric dipole resonance on the Si spheres diameter.

km 155:5 3:1d;

(1)

ke 204 2d;

(2)

where km and ke represent the resonance wavelength of magnetic and electric dipoles, and d is the diameter of Si spheres.
Note that these expressions can only be used to the sphere
with diameter range from 100 to 200 nm. The scattering intensity also increases when we increase the diameter because
the enlargement of the dipole moment.
Considering that Si nanospheres with different diameters
have different scattering peaks in the visible wavelength,
these nanospheres can perform as a component in spectral
splitting device. When the visible light signals with multiple
wavelengths irradiating on a Si nanosphere with the given
size, the nanosphere can pick up signal with particular
wavelength.
B. Si-based nanoplasmonic structure

The schematic diagram of a Si-based nanoplasmonic

structure is presented in Fig. 2. The Si nanosphere is placed
on the end of a gold nanorod. The plane wave with multiple
wavelengths irradiates on the Si sphere vertically. The electric vector vibration direction and the wave vector direction
are also presented in Fig. 2. The diameter of Si sphere is
denoted by ds , and the diameter of gold rod is denoted by dr .

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FIG. 2. The schematic of the nanoantenna is presented. The diameter of Au

rod is fixed to 150 nm and the distance from the rod end to detector (d) is
fixed to 100 nm. The length of rod (L) and the diameter of Si sphere influence the transmission spectrum significantly.

L represents the length of nanorod, and d is the distance from

gold rod to the detector fixed to 100 nm.
We change the diameter of Si sphere to confirm that
the wavelength-selective scattering property. First, ds is
changed from 180 to 210 nm, and dr is fixed to 150 nm. The
scattered light couples with the plasmon of gold and propagates through the nanorod, and the emergent light is
detected by a planar detector placed below the nanorod.
The transmission spectrum is shown in Fig. 3(a). There are
mainly four peaks in the 300900 nm spectral range. The
peak A remains unshifted when changing the diameter of Si
sphere. It is because that peak A is generated by the strong
oscillation of collective free electrons on the interface of
gold and surrounding medium (air). That is, the scattered
light excited the SPR for the longitudinal mode.2022 Since
this kind of resonance peak is sensitive to surrounding
dielectric environment and the surroundings of Au nanorod
are almost air, the peak A cannot shift by changing diameter of Si sphere.
The peaks B and C are larger transmittance, because
these two resonance peaks are generated by the strong coupling of Si spheres electric dipole resonance and the LSPR
at the junction of Si sphere and Au rod. This phenomenon is
similar to the plasmon-exciton hybridization in which the SP
polaritons (SPP) couple with molecular or quantum well
excitons in the hybrid metal-semiconductor nanostructure.2326 When the energy level of LSPR mode and the exciton transition dipole is approaching, the interaction of these

FIG. 3. Transmission spectra varied with size of Si sphere. (a) Spectra of the
nanoantennas possess Si spheres with 180, 190, 200, and 210 nm diameter.
Peaks A, B, C, and D are four mainly resonance peaks in 300900 nm spectrum. (b) Spectra of the nanoantennas possess Si spheres with 150, 160, and
170 nm diameter. (c) Transmission spectra in the 630730 nm regions for
the nanoantennas contain Si spheres with different diameters (180, 190, 200,
and 210 nm).

two modes can lead to the Rabi splitting. Similarly, the interaction between the electric dipole resonance in Si sphere and
the LSPR at the interface of silicon and gold can also lead to
the Rabi splitting. Because the coupling mechanism results
in anticrossing of the hybrid structure dispersion curves and
the formation of two hybrid energy states separated by a

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Rabi splitting energy, we can see two peaks (peaks B and C)

in the 600700 nm region.
The peak D is the coupling between magnetic dipole
resonance of Si sphere and the LSPR at the interface of silicon and gold. Considering that the magnetic dipole resonance peak is just overlapped partially with the plasmon
resonance peak, the intensity of hybrid resonance peak is relatively low. Comparing the exiting spectrum of the nanoantennas that consist of Si spheres with different sizes, we can
see that all resonance peaks, except the peak A, have red
shifts when increasing the diameter of Si spheres. Thus, we
demonstrate that these nanoantennas will not loss the
wavelength-selective scattering property varied with diameter compared to that of single Si nanospheres. It should be
noted that the peaks B and C are redshifted compared with
the electric resonance peak of a single Si sphere and peak D
is also redshifted compared with the magnetic peak of a single Si sphere. These redshifts can be explained by the
Coulombic interaction. The polarization charges in Si
spheres interact with and transfer energy to the free charges
in Au rods, and this mechanism causes the enhancement and
redshift of the resonance peaks.17
When reduced the diameter of Si sphere below 170 nm
(Fig. 3(b)), the coupled electric resonance peaks (peaks B
and C) overlapped with the peak A. But the coupled magnetic resonance peak still has the wavelength-selective scattering property varied with diameter in the visible range.
We study the spectral region from 630 to 720 nm in Fig.
3(a) and replot the spectral in Fig. 3(c). When the diameter
of Si spheres varies from 180 to 210 nm, the positions of
peaks C are 640, 656, 668, and 680 nm in turn. And the fullwidth at half maximum (FWHM) of these peaks are more
narrow than that of the scattering peaks of a single Si particle, which makes the proposed device superior to a single Si
nanosphere. For example, a device containing four Si-Au
nanoantennas with 180 to 210 nm Si spheres can combine as
a four channels demultiplexer in the subwavelength visible
light communication. The incident lights with a wide spectral range from 630 to 700 nm irradiate on the device and the
signals with different wavelengths can be divided to different
channels.
Accordingly, we demonstrate that this nanoantenna
can achieve wavelength selective reception and SPRinduced optical signal amplification. Besides, as a nanoplasmonic device, this device can perform as a nanolens to
confine the light field and process the signal in subwavelength scale.
C. Au nanorod in nanoantenna

We study the influence of the size of Au nanorods on

the spectrum, in which the Au nanorod has a diameter of
150 nm and a length of 500 nm. When interacting with the
incident plane wave, the plasmon resonance peak is located
at 575 nm. To investigate how the aspect ratio affects the
plasmon resonance peak of Au nanorods, we fix the diameter
dr to 150 nm and change the length of nanorod from 300 to
600 nm. The detector below the nanorod 100 nm records the
transmission spectra as shown in Fig. 4(a). It is noted that the

J. Appl. Phys. 116, 154307 (2014)

FIG. 4. (a) The transmission spectra of single Au rod (disabled Si sphere).

The length of Au rod changes from 300 to 600 nm and the diameter is fixed
to 150 nm; however, the plasmon resonance peak almost remains no change.
(b) Transmission spectra of the nanoantennas having 500 and 1000 nm
length Au rod, respectively.

plasmon resonance peaks are not very sensitive to the change

of aspect ratio. This phenomenon is useful for design device,
suggesting that no need to consider the coupling effect
between Au nanorods with different lengths and Si nanosphere. Although the resonance peaks just shift slightly, the
intensity of the resonance peak varies with lengths significantly. The Au nanorod with length of 600 nm has the maximum transmission because the long nanorod is able to
support more plasmon resonance modes6 and acts as a
Fabry-Perot-type plasmon resonator that enhances the exiting signals.
We further study two nanoantennas with the Au nanorods that have lengths of 500 and 1000 nm, respectively. The
transmission spectra are presented in Fig. 4(b). The emergent
light from the 1000 nm long nanorod has higher intensity
especially near the longitude plasmon resonance peak at the
location of 574 nm, so the peaks A and B doubled in this process. Therefore, we conclude that changing the length of Au
nanorods cannot influence the coupling between Au nanorod
and Si nanosphere, instead, increasing the length of Au nanorod enhances the output signals. As a nanoantenna, this
structure has no strict requirement for the size of Au nanorod, which makes this nanoantenna easy to realize in the
experiment.

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Based on these results above, we are able to design a

nanoantenna with the optimization size, that is a Si sphere
with diameter of 190 nm coupling with a Au rod with diameter of 150 nm can achieve 574, 608, 656, 782 nm four channel signal outputs in the visible wavelength, and the
scattering light signals can be amplified more than ten times.
In addition, the Au nanorod can act as a waveguide to
achieve the connection between the scattering source and the
detector effectively.
III. DISCUSSION

Because the distance between Si sphere and Au rod is

much smaller than the illumination wavelength, their modes
interact and cause peaks shift. This process can be explained
by the plasmon hybridization, which describes the interaction between modes in complex systems.2731 We suggest
the hybridization diagram in Fig. 5(a), and we can prove the
hybridization process by checking the electric field distribution calculated via the FDTD method. The Si sphere with
190 nm diameter and the Au rod with 150 nm diameter and
500 nm length are used to analyze the hybridization mechanism. Si sphere has two modes, and the energy level of the
magnetic dipole resonance and the electric dipole resonance
are 2.14 (580 nm) and 1.67 eV (743 nm), respectively. Au
rod also has two modes, that is, the SPR for the longitudinal
mode and the LSPR between Si Au interface. The resonance
wavelength of the latter kSiAu can be determined by the
equation22
s


1
(3)
 1 em ;
kSiAu kp e1
L
where kp is the plasmon resonance wavelength of gold in
vacuum, e1 is the high-frequency dielectric constant of gold,
L is the depolarization factor along the length axis of nanorod, and em is the dielectric of silicon. For silicon has high
dielectric constant, kSiAu has red shift compared to the SPR
between air and gold interface. kSiAu can also be determined
intuitively by the electric field amplification at the vertical
cross-section presented in Fig. 5(b). A hot-spot can be seen
in the junction of Si sphere and Au rod, and the amplification
factor reaches the maximum, nearly 60 times, when wavelength is equal to 646 nm. Therefore, we find out that the two
modes of Au rod have the energy levels at 2.16 (574 nm) and
1.92 eV (646 nm), respectively.
When combined to a complex structure, the energy levels would change. The energy level of the hybridization
modes are plotted in the middle of Fig. 5(a). The energy levels at 2.16 (574 nm), 2.04 (608 nm), 1.89 (656 nm), and 1.59
(782 nm) are equivalent to the peaks A, B, C, and D in Fig.
3(a). The energy level at 2.16 eV is equal to the SPR for the
longitudinal mode. This mode embodies the property of single Au rod and cannot be influenced by the hybridization,
because the output signals are received after the propagation
and stimulate the longitudinal mode along the long axis of
Au rod inevitably. This energy level is varied by the aspect
ratio of rod and the surrounding medium. From Figs. 5(c)
and 5(e), we can see nodes along the surface of Au rods,

FIG. 5. The coupling between Si sphere and Au rod. (a) The hybridization
diagram describes the interaction between Si spheres two modes and Au
rods two modes. Energy levels at 2.16, 1.92, 2.14, 1.67, 2.04, 1.89, and
1.59 eV represent the peaks at 574, 646, 580, 743, 608, 656, and 782 nm in
the spectra. The electric field amplification at 646 nm in (b) reveals the
LSPR at the interface between Si and Au. And the electric field distribution
at 574 nm in (c) explains the longitudinal mode of the propagating plasmon
resonance along the surface of nanorod. The electric field inside a single Si
sphere at 743 nm in (d) reveals a magnetic dipole like resonance. (e)(h)
The electric field patterns of the nanoantennas at 574, 608, 656, and 782 nm,
respectively.

which proves the existence of the longitudinal resonance

mode at 574 nm whether on single Au rod or complex
structure.
The other two energy levels at 2.04 and 1.89 eV are generated by the hybridization mechanism between the electric
dipole resonance of Si sphere and the LSPR of Au rod. This
principle is always used to analyze the interaction between
different metal structures, because LSPR is strongly affected
by the near-field coupling of the resonances of adjacent particles. For example, the asymmetric dimers composed of a
silver nanoparticle and a gold nanoparticle hybridize to form
a lower energy bonding plasmon mode and a higher energy

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antibonding plasmon mode.32 In this situation, we demonstrate that the coupling between scattering light from the
dipole radiation and the plasmon resonance of Au rod can
also be describe by hybridization principle. These two modes
Ws and Wr hybridize either the in-phase (Ws Wr ) or out-ofphase (Ws  Wr ). And the eigenvalues for the hybrid modes
can be presented30


xr xs
6
hx h

D6e;
(4)
2



*
*
*
*
*
*
3 ps  R pr  R
ps  pr

;
(5)
e/
R3
R5
*

property of Au rod in this structure. The coupling mechanism between the dielectric scattering source and the metal
plasmon component in the subwavelength scale was investigated by the hybridization model. It was found that that
this nanoantenna can realize signal output with certain specific wavelengths when white light inputting, and the
receiving signal wavelengths can be tuned by changing the
diameter of Si sphere. Meanwhile, visible light signals can
be focused and transferred to detector by Au rod. These
results suggested that the proposed nanoplasmonic structure
can been expected to be used in on-chip nanophotonics as
antenna, spectral splitter, and demultiplexer for visible light
communication.

where D is the offset term, e is the splitting term. ps and pr

are the dipole moment vectors for
silicon electric resonance
*
and the LSPR of Au rod. And R is the displacement vector
connecting the two dipoles. The splitting term e in our complex structure is negative, so the in-phase state reflects a
bonding mode that has a red-shift and the out-of-phase state
reflects an anti-bonding mode having a blue-shift.
Therefore, the coupling between the electric dipole resonance of Si sphere (1.67 eV) and the LSPR of Au rod
(1.92 eV) produces the bonding mode at 1.89 eV and the
anti-bonding mode at 2.04 eV. The electric field distribution
obtained from FDTD can verify this hybridization mechanism. Observing the electric field pattern at 608 and 656 nm
in Figs. 5(f) and 5(g), we can find a nearly circular shape
inside the Si sphere and a hot-spot at the junction between Si
sphere and Au rod. The circular shape is the electric dipole
pattern. And the hot-spot can be seen in Fig. 5(b), which
means the intensively LSPR at the Si-Au interface. So it is
more convinced that the two modes at 1.89 (656 nm) and
2.04 eV (608 nm) are produced by the hybridization between
the electric dipole resonance of Si sphere and the LSPR of
Au rod.
Similarly, the energy level at 1.59 eV (Fig. 5(a)) can be
explained to the hybridization between the magnetic dipole
resonance of Si sphere and the LSPR of Au rod. However, it
only has the in-phase state Ws Wr that possesses the eigenvalue at 1.59 eV. Because the magnetic dipole resonance and
the LSPR of Au rod have the equal but oppositely oriented
dipoles, the out-of-phase mode is suppressed strongly. So
only the in-phase mode can be seen in the spectral (Fig.
3(a)). The electric field pattern inside a single Si sphere in
Fig. 5(d) at 1.67 eV (743 nm) and in the complex structure in
Fig. 5(h) at 1.59 eV(782 nm) are similar. Therefore, we make
sure that this mode is generated from the hybridization
between the magnetic dipole resonance of Si sphere and the
LSPR of Au rod.
IV. CONCLUSION

In summary, we have proposed a novel Si-based nanoplasmonic structure as an antenna and reception amplifier
for visible light communication based on the interaction
between the dipole resonance of Si sphere and the LSPR of
Au rod. The low-loss and wavelength-selective scattering
properties of Si sphere cooperate well with the SPR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The National Natural Science Foundation of China

(91233203) and the State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic
Materials and Technologies supported this work.
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