A plasmonic SAW transducer

Ahmet Arca

doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2014.10.021

A plasmonic SAW transducer

Ultrasonics. 2015 Mar:57:50-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2014.10.021. Epub 2014 Nov 13.

Author

Ahmet Arca¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, European University of Lefke, Gemikonagi, Mersin 10, Turkey. Electronic address: aarca@eul.edu.tr.

PMID: 25435494
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2014.10.021

Abstract

In this work, an acoustic-optical transducer that is based on the utilization of plasmons is proposed to optically detect SAW of wavelength (<400 nm) smaller than the optical wavelength (800 nm). Although grating based coupling of plasmons is well known, it has not been applied in the detection of ultrasound. In this work, designs utilizing this operating principle are proposed which can achieve higher changes in reflectivity than those achievable by traditional methods, thus overcoming the traditional difficulties in the detection of very high frequency (10 GHz range) SAWs. The proposed device can be fabricated on surfaces at low cost and be used to detect remotely.

Keywords: GHz frequency SAW; Optical detection of ultrahigh frequency SAW; Optical transducers; Plasmonic SAW transducer; SAW transducer.