ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the key developments in the rapidly emerging field of nanoplasmonics. The use of metallic nanostructures has enabled the creation of nanoscale optical components, devices, and circuits that offer new types of functionalities that are either very hard or impossible to obtain with dielectrics or semiconductors. The ever increasing demand for faster information transport and processing capabilities is undeniable. Noble metal nanostructures may possess exactly the right combination of electronic and optical properties to tackle the interconnect crisis outlined above and realize the dream of significantly faster processing speeds. The dramatic advances in nanofabrication and full-field electromagnetic simulation techniques have enabled the realization of a wide variety of plasmonic waveguide structures. The operation of a large class of plasmonic devices can simply be predicted by well-developed classical electromagnetic simulation tools. Plasmonics has the potential to play a unique and important role in enhancing the processing speed and capabilities of future integrated circuitry.
