Robustly Efficient Superfocusing of Immersion Plasmonic Lenses Based on Coupled Nanoslits

Abstract

We report plasmonic lenses consisting of coupled nanoslits immersed in a high-index medium to obtain the robustly efficient superfocusing. Based on the geometrical optics and the wavefront reconstruction theory, an array of nanoslits perforated in a gold film and a series of spacings between adjacent nanoslits are optimally designed to realize the desired phase modulation for light focusing. The numerical results verify the design of each plasmonic lens in excellent agreement. For the given total phase difference of 2π, the immersion plasmonic lenses with smaller lens aperture can have much better focusing performance than the non-immersion one. A superfocusing spot of λ/4.39 is achieved using an oil immersion plasmonic lens with an aperture size of 4.97λ, resulting in a resolution improvement of 68.9 % compared with the non-immersion lens. Moreover, such superfocusing performance can be still well kept when the structural parameters of the lens, e.g., nanoslit width and metal film thickness, are deviated from the original design, making the final implementation of the superfocusing lenses much easier.