Abstract

Photonics has experienced rapid growth in recent years and market promotion. Photonics is an emerging field of science which deals with nanoscale fabrication and characterization techniques. The aim of this paper is to overview some achievements on light harnessed in photonic nanostructures. We present the results from recent papers and from seminal papers. Successful approaches from relevant literature, together with results from our own research are presented. Our research was performed by numerical integrations with the MIT codes and dealt especially with light confinement in nanostructures. This progress has brought with it a renewed interest in surface plasmon-polaritons that allow electromagnetic energy to be localized, confined, and guided on subwavelength scales. Moreover, the locally enhanced field intensities observed in plasmonic structures promise potential for molecular biosensing, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and nonlinear optical device applications.

Keywords: Light enhancement, numerical modeling, photonic nanostructure, plasmons, silicon–on–insulator, void structure.

Graphical Abstract