Abstract
The experimental demonstration and characterization is made of the plasmon-mediated resonant transmission through an embedded undulated continuous thin metal film under normal incidence. 1D undulations are shown to enable a spatially resolved polarisation filtering whereas 2D undulations lead to spatially resolved, polarization independent transmission. Whereas the needed submicron microstructure lends itself in principle to CD-like low-cost mass replication by means of injection moulding and embossing, the present paper demonstrates the expected transmission effects on experimental models based on metal-coated photoresist gratings. The spectral and angular dependence in the neighbourhood of resonance are investigated and the question of the excess losses exhibited by surface plasmons is discussed.
Highlights
Light transmission through metallic films can be caused by different mechanisms
The experimental demonstration and characterization is made of the plasmon-mediated resonant transmission through an embedded undulated continuous thin metal film under normal incidence. 1D undulations are shown to enable a spatially resolved polarisation filtering whereas 2D undulations lead to spatially resolved, polarization independent transmission
Whereas the needed submicron microstructure lends itself in principle to CD-like low-cost mass replication by means of injection moulding and embossing, the present paper demonstrates the expected transmission effects on experimental models based on metal-coated photoresist gratings
Summary
Light transmission through metallic films can be caused by different mechanisms. The best known and most popular is that of propagation through periodic slits or holes perforating the metal film [1] where the transmitted spectrum is in the form of peaks resulting from resonances between in-plane and hole plasmon resonances [2]. There is an abundant literature on the use of the plasmon tunnelling effect for extracting the light generated next to a metal electrode in LEDs and especially in OLEDs [6] All these plasmon-mediated features rest on a solid theoretical basis built during the last two decades where the dispersion properties of grating coupled plasmons modes have been elucidated; most relevant references can be found in the review paper [7]. The coupling mechanism and related resonant transmission is applied to one-dimensional spatial filters exhibiting polarization and spectral filtering as well as simple polarization independent transmission through two-dimensional metal coated undulations These filter functions can be implemented by means of high productivity injection moulding and embossing technologies. The problem of the large excess losses exhibited by a grating coupled plasmon is discussed on the basis of the obtained experimental results; this problem was identified as early as in 1985 [8], it has not received a satisfactory explanation yet
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