Waveguides normally have dimensions on the order of the wavelength of the radiation, and visible light’s wavelength is on the hundreds of nm. However, by using near-field effects it is possible to build much smaller waveguides. Professor Harry Atwater’s group at Caltech proposed design for such a nanowaveguide using nanoparticles or nanorods and exploiting their plasmon resonance. The Caltech group together with LMR have now demonstrated experimentally such a nanowaveguide. The results were published in Nature Materials, which also ran a news article about it. Nanowaveguides may have many applications in nanotechnology, for example, to supply energy to individual nanomachines.
Reference: S. A. Maier, P. G. Kik, H. A. Atwater, S. Meltzer, E. Harel, B. E. Koel and A. A. G. Requicha “Local detection of electromagnetic energy transport below the diffraction limit in metal nanoparticle plasmon waveguides“, Nature Materials, Vol. 2, No.4, pp. 229-232, April 2003.
