Magnetic metamaterials in the blue range using aluminum nanostructures

Full Color Generation Using Silver Tandem Nanodisks

Plasmonic effects associated with metallic nanostructures have been widely studied for color generation. It became apparent that highly saturated and bright colors are hard to obtain, and very small nanostructures need to be fabricated. To address this issue, in this study, we employ metal-insulator-metal sandwich nanodisks that support enhanced in-phase electric dipole modes, which are blue-shifted with respect to a single metal disk. The blue shift enables the generation of short wavelength colors with larger nanostructures. The radiation modes hybridize with the Wood's anomaly in periodic structures, creating narrow and high-resonance peaks in the reflection and deep valleys in the transmission spectra, thus producing vivid complementary colors in both cases. Full colors can be achieved by tuning the radius of the nanodisks and the periodicity of the arrays. Good agreement between simulations and experiments is demonstrated and analyzed in CIE1931, sRGB, and HSV color spaces. The presented method has potential for applications in imaging, data storage, ultrafine displays, and plasmon-based biosensors.

Pushing the high-energy limit of plasmonics

The localized surface plasmon resonance of metal nanoparticles allows confining the eletromagnetic field in nanosized volumes, creating high-field "hot spots", most useful for enhanced nonlinear optical spectroscopies. The commonly employed metals, Au and Ag, yield plasmon resonances only spanning the visible/near-infrared range. Stretching upward, the useful energy range of plasmonics requires exploiting different materials. Deep-ultraviolet plasmon resonances happen to be achievable with one of the cheapest and most abundant materials available: aluminum indeed holds the promise of a broadly tunable plasmonic response, theoretically extending far into the deep-ultraviolet. Complex nanofabrication and the unavoidable Al oxidation have so far prevented the achievement of this ultimate high-energy response. A nanofabrication technique producing purely metallic Al nanoparticles has at last allowed to overcome these limits, pushing the plasmon resonance to 6.8 eV photon energy (≈180 nm) and thus significantly broadening the spectral range of plasmonics' numerous applications.

Hybrid metal-dielectric ring resonators for homogenizable optical metamaterials with strong magnetic response at short wavelengths down to the ultraviolet range

We derive an analytical LC model from Maxwell's equations for the magnetic resonance of subwavelength ring resonators. Using the LC model, we revisit the scaling of split-ring resonators. Inspired by the LC model, we propose a hybrid metal-dielectric ring resonator mainly composed of high index dielectric material (e.g., TiO₂) with some gaps filled with metal (e.g., Ag). The saturation frequency of magnetic response for the hybrid metal-dielectric ring resonator is much higher (up to the ultraviolet range) than that for split-ring resonators, and can be controlled by the metal fraction in the ring. The hybrid metal-dielectric ring resonator can also overcome the homogenization problem of all-dielectric magnetic resonators, and therefore can form homogenizable magnetic metamaterials at short wavelengths down to the ultraviolet range.

Deep ultraviolet plasmon resonance in aluminum nanoparticle arrays

Small aluminum nanoparticles have the potential to exhibit localized surface plasmon resonances in the deep ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, however technical and scientific challenges make it difficult to attain this limit. We report the fabrication of arrays of Al/Al2O3 core/shell nanoparticles with a metallic-core diameter between 12 and 25 nm that display sharp plasmonic resonances at very high energies, up to 5.8 eV (down to λ = 215 nm). The arrays were fabricated by means of a straightforward self-organization approach. The experimental spectra were compared with theoretical calculations that allow the correlation of each feature to the corresponding plasmon modes.

'Fairy Chimney'-shaped tandem metamaterials as double resonance SERS substrates

A highly tunable design for obtaining double resonance substrates to be used in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy is proposed. Tandem truncated nanocones composed of Au-SiO(2)-Au layers are designed, simulated and fabricated to obtain resonances at laser excitation and Stokes frequencies. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering experiments are conducted to compare the enhancements obtained from double resonance substrates to those obtained from single resonance gold truncated nanocones. The best enhancement factor obtained using the new design is 3.86 × 10(7). The resultant tandem structures are named after "Fairy Chimneys" rock formation in Cappadocia, Turkey.

Fano interference in supported gold nanosandwiches with weakly coupled nanodisks

We studied the far-field optical response of supported gold-silica-gold nanosandwiches using spectroscopic ellipsometry, reflectance and transmittance measurements. Although transmittance data clearly shows that the gold nanodisks in the sandwich structure interact very weakly, oblique reflectance spectra of s- and p-polarized light show clearly asymmetric line-shapes of the Fano type. However, all experimental results are very well described by modeling the gold nanodisks as oblate spheroids and by employing a 2 × 2 scattering matrix formulation of the Fresnel coefficients provided by an island film theory. In particular, the Fano asymmetry can be explained in terms of interference between the scattered waves from the decoupled nanodisks in the spectral range limited by their respective plasmon resonances. We also show that the reflectance and ellipsometry spectra can be described by a three-layer system with uniaxial effective dielectric functions.

Asymmetric fishnet metamaterials with strong optical activity

We investigate the optical properties of mono- and double-layer asymmetric fishnet metamaterials with orientated elliptical holes, which exhibit exotic spectral and polarization rotating characteristics in the visible spectral range. Our results show that nontrivial orientations of the holes with respect to the reciprocal lattice vectors of the periodic lattice in both systems produce strong polarization rotation as well as additional enhanced optical transmission peaks. Analysis of the electromagnetic field distribution shows the unusual effect is produced by the spinning localized surface plasmon resonances due to the asymmetric geometry. High sensitivity of the hybridized mode on the dielectric spacing, the aspect ratio of the holes and the embedding media in double-layer structure is also observed. The dependence of spectral and polarization response on the orientation of the holes and the embedding media is useful for design of chiral metamaterials at optical frequencies and tailoring the polarization behavior of the metallic nano-structures.

Magnetic field concentrator for probing optical magnetic metamaterials

Development of all dielectric and plasmonic metamaterials with a tunable optical frequency magnetic response creates a need for new inspection techniques. We propose a method of measuring magnetic responses of such metamaterials within a wide range of optical frequencies with a single probe. A tapered fiber probe with a radially corrugated metal coating concentrates azimuthally polarized light in the near-field into a subwavelength spot the longitudinal magnetic field component which is much stronger than the perpendicular electric one. The active probe may be used in a future scanning near-field magnetic microscope for studies of magnetic responses of subwavelength elementary cells of metamaterials.

Tunable photonic metamaterials in the near infrared frequencies

By using interference lithography and electron-beam evaporation and lift-off, we fabricate a series of pairs of elliptical metal-dielectric-metal plates with varying lengths of major and minor axis. Transmission measurements reveal that the magnetic response of the structures show linear shift with both the axis length of the elliptical plates and polarization direction of the incident light in a region of from 1.26microm to 2.10 microm. Our structures offer opportunities for oversimply constructing bulk photonic metamaterials for various applications.