High-efficiency surface plasmonic polariton waveguides with enhanced low-frequency performance in microwave frequencies.

In this paper, a planar waveguide based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) with metals on both sides of the corrugated strip as grounds is firstly proposed in microwave region. Simple and efficient conversion between guided waves and SSPPs is realized by gradient corrugated strip with grounds on both sides. Compared with plasmonic waveguide with flaring ground [Laser Photonics Rev. 8, 146 (2014)], the addition of grounds suppresses the radiation loss effectively and improves the low-frequency performance with tighter field confinement, which leads to a wider operating bandwidth. Moreover, as the asymptotic frequency of SSPPs decreasing, the confinement of SSPPs is further enhanced by a defected ground structure (DGS), which is achieved by the periodic grooves symmetrical to those on the corrugated strip. Therefore, miniaturization of the proposed waveguide can be realized. Measured results validate both high efficiency of momentum and impedance matching and enhanced performance in the region of lower frequencies with the wave vectors close to those in free space. Such results have significant values in plasmonic functional devices and integrated circuits in microwave frequencies.