Nano-metallic-planar-apex metamaterials

Abstract

We present the results of numerical simulations and preliminary experiments to investigate the nano-focusing effect of incident light based on the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on the nano-metallic-planar-apex metamaterials (NMPAM). The NMPAM are prepared by Focused Ion Beam lithography (FIB), a nanoscale fabrication tool. The NMPAM can be used to remarkably enhance the strength of the surface evanescent and lead to the excitation of several SPP modes on the metal surface. The interaction of different SPPs result in unique near-field optical properties for imaging and optical storage, so as to focus light into a nano-size point and thus enhance the light power greatly. The energy flow and electromagnetic field distribution is calculated by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The nano-spot position and intensity is experimentally shown to be controlled by the array of the apex. In our experiments, we fabricate a 10×10 array by FIB, and then the scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) is used to observe the optical power distribution in nano-scale at the air-metal interface in the infrared region. we find that the light can be focus into ~100nm-scale and consequently enhance the light power up to several times than before common focusing method. The principle of nano-focusing based on nano-planar-apex is theoretically explained. The NMPAM can be utilized for coupling with infrared pixels to enhance the incident light converging so as to improve signal to noise ratio of infrared detection.