The aim of this thesis is to develop a technique which can be used in the reliable modelling, design and optimisation of practical suboptical wavelength sized photonic/plasmonic devices, which may involve arbitrary geometries on various scales. The technique involves the application of numerical electromagnetic simulation led by theoretical knowledge and physical insight to determine, design and optimise the operating mechanism of such devices. The work in this thesis contains a variety of problems/devices which involve arbitrary structures of different scales. This poses difficulties in both the fabrication and the modelling aspects of the design. The problems range in difficulty from those which can be simply and perfectly described via an analytical solution, to those which would be impractical to design using any other technique. The nature of the problems considered, i.e. the complicated geometry and the range of scales, necessitates the use of a flexible modelling technique. Finite Element Method (FEM) was found to be a valuable tool in the design and optimisation of the devices throughout this thesis, owing its success mainly to its versatility and flexible meshing abilities which allowed its operation in different length scales in an efficient manner. Three nanophotonic/plasmonic devices are considered in an effort to demonstrate the implementation and the application of the developed technique. The devices considered in this thesis demonstrate different challenges in the modelling and design while being of considerable interest in their own right as nanostructures for sensing and measurement. These devices are: A self-calibrated plasmon sensor, a plasmon resonator and an ultrahigh frequency optical acoustic surface wave detector. Whilst the first two devices are important as an application of plasmonics, the third device links the mechanical and optical processes together.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:522989 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Arca, Ahmet |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11169/ |
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