Disposable Plasmonics: Plastic Templated Plasmonic Metamaterials with Tunable Chirality.

Affar S Karimullah,Ryan Tullius,Malcolm Kadodwala,Vincent M Rotello,Calum Jack,Laurence D Barron,Graeme Cooke,Nikolaj Gadegaard

doi:10.1002/adma.201501816

Abstract

Development of low-cost disposable plasmonic substrates is vital for the applicability of plasmonic sensing. Such devices can be made using injection-molded templates to create plasmonic films. The elements of these plasmonic films are hybrid nanostructures composed of inverse and solid structures. Tuning the modal coupling between the two allows optimization of the optical properties for nanophotonic applications.

Highlights

We present a novel material, a continuous plasmonic metafilm consisting of periodic arrays of chiral nanostructures with optical properties that are significantly dependent on film thickness
We show with our chiral hybrid metafilms, that by controlling the spatial overlap between the solid and inverse structure, using film thickness, the coupling between electric and magnetic modes can be controlled enabling the chiral/optical properties to be manipulated with relative ease
To illustrate the potential of the tunable “disposable” templated plasmonic substrates” (TPS), we present an exemplar case where a chiral substrate, consisting of a periodic array of “shuriken” indentations which are either left (LH) or right handed (RH), is used for picogram characterization of protein structure with “plasmonic polarimetry.”[5]. The combination of the low cost injection-molded templates and the tunability of the films they can be used to produce, make the present study a significant step in the technological application of metamaterials

Summary

Introduction

Engineered plasmonic metamaterials can manipulate light in unique ways affording new opportunities in optics and for spectroscopic detection and characterization of matter.[1,2,3,4,5] These plasmonic phenomena can be exploited to create new sensing, data storage and photovoltaic technologies.[6,7,8,9,10] With improved understanding of plasmonic phenomena, nanostructures with complex form factors can be designed for specific applications.[5,11,12,13] To date the tuning of optical properties of metamaterials has been achieved through the design of the shape and symmetry of the constituent nanostructures. We present a novel material, a continuous plasmonic metafilm consisting of periodic arrays of chiral nanostructures with optical properties that are significantly dependent on film thickness.

Results

Conclusion