Beam steering and impedance matching of plasmonic horn nanoantennas

In this paper, we study a plasmonic horn nanoantenna on a metal-backed substrate. The horn nanoantenna structure consists of a two-wire transmission line (TWTL) flared at the end. We analyze the effect of the substrate thickness on the nanoantenna's radiation pattern, and demonstrate beam steering in a broad range of elevation angles. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of the ground plane on the impedance matching between the antenna and the TWTL, and observe that the ground plane increases the back reflection into the waveguide. To reduce the reflection, we develop a transmission line model to design an impedance matching section which leads to 99.75% power transmission to the nanoantenna. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America.