Demonstration of a high extinction ratio TiN-based TM-pass waveguide polarizer

A high extinction ratio transverse magnetic (TM)-pass plasmonic waveguide polarizer has been designed and optimized. This device exploits two parallel TiN strips embedded in a silicon dioxide cladding to cut off the transverse electric (TE) polarization state, which is either reflected or absorbed, while the TM mode can pass through the main silicon waveguide with significant low losses. Given a device of 5 μm length, an extinction ratio as high as 60.7 dB and an insertion loss of 2.23 dB were achieved at the target wavelength of 1.55 μm. To our knowledge, this extinction ratio is one of the highest values ever reported. In the wavelength of 1.45–1.59 μm, the proposed device provides an optical bandwidth of 140 nm for an extinction ratio more than 30 dB and an insertion loss less than 3 dB. This device is relatively simple and is easier to be fabricated than other architectures that are found in the literature.