AND gate

Plasmon

Physics

NAND gate

NOR gate

Engineering

AND-OR-Invert

Logic gate

Electronic circuit

Logic synthesis

Logic family

Materials science

Pass transistor logic

Electronic engineering

Nanoring

Computer science

Optoelectronics

XNOR gate

Quantum mechanics

Digital electronics

Journal of Nanophotonics

We propose, analyze, and simulate a configuration to realize all-optical logic gates based on nanoring insulator–metal–insulator (IMI) plasmonic waveguides. The proposed plasmonic logic gates are numerically analyzed by finite element method. The analyzed gates are NOT, OR, AND, NOR, NAND, XOR, and XNOR. The operation principle of these gates is based on the constructive and destructive interferences between the input signal(s) and the control signal. The suggested value of transmission threshold between logic 0 and logic 1 states is 0.25. The suggested value of the transmission threshold achieves all seven plasmonic logic gates in one structure. We use the same structure with the same dimensions at 1550-nm wavelength for all proposed plasmonic logic gates. Although we realize seven gates, in some cases, the transmission of the proposed plasmonic logic gates exceeds 100%, for example, in OR gate (175%), in NAND gate (112.3%), and in XNOR gate (175%). As a result, the transmission threshold value measures the performance of the proposed plasmonic logic gates. Furthermore, the proposed structure is designed with a very small area (400 nm × 400 nm). The proposed all-optical logic gates structure significantly contributes to the photonic integrated circuits construction and all-optical signal processing nanocircuits.

All-optical logic gates based on nanoring insulator–metal–insulator plasmonic waveguides at optical communications band