Metamaterials- and nanotechnology-based low power and small footprint integrated photonics

Integrated nanophotonics has shown a remarkable development in recent years and can find applications in virtually all fields of photonics, though its predominant focus has so far been in telecom and lately computer interconnects. This progress has primarily been based on nano- and III–V technology development, the introduction of silicon technology, with larger refractive index contrast than previously available, as well as subwavelength plasmonics structures. For the latter, a main problem, especially for ICT applications, has been the large optical loss associated with deep subwavelength confinement, as discussed below.