Development of surface plasmon polariton-based nanolasers

Overcoming the optical diffraction limit and reducing the size of optoelectronic integrated circuits have become requirements for the rapidly increasing demand for data transmission and novel functionality. These goals can be achieved by applying a surface plasmon mode that can attain subwavelength confinement. In this Tutorial, we discuss the operation principle and development of the surface plasmon amplification of the stimulated emission of radiation and the newly developed plasmonic nanolasers that play essential roles in reducing system sizes. Nanowire-type surface plasmon polariton (SPP) nanolasers with semiconductor–insulator–metal structures were developed and integrated with graphene, which offers numerous advantages to SPP nanolasers. Furthermore, the electrical modulation mechanism of nanolasers on graphene–insulator–metal (GIM) platform was also verified, which can recognize integrated SPP detectors. Therefore, we propose using an integrated plasmonic circuit on the GIM platform to provide multiple functionalities in a compact footprint.