Ion-beam assisted laser fabrication of sensing plasmonic nanostructures

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel two-stage hybrid laser and ion-beam technique for fabricating complex plasmonic nanostructures on glass, enabling precise control over shape, size, and height for enhanced optical properties.

Contribution

The authors introduce a simple, scalable method combining laser irradiation and ion-beam polishing to create customizable plasmonic nanostructures with controlled geometry and properties.

Findings

Shape and size depend on laser pulse energy and film thickness

Ion-beam polishing controls nanostructure height

Fabricated structures exhibit strong plasmonic responses

Abstract

Simple high-performance two-stage hybrid technique was developed for fabrication of different plasmonic nanostructures, including nanorods, nanorings, as well as more complex structures on glass substrates. In this technique a thin noble metal film on a dielectric substrate is irradiated by a tightly focused single nanosecond laser pulse and then the modified region is slowly polished by an accelerated argon ion (Ar+) beam. As a result, each nanosecond laser pulse locally modifies the initial metal film through initiation of fast melting and subsequent hydrodynamic processes, while the following Ar+-ion polishing removes the rest of the film, revealing the hidden topography features and fabricating separate plasmonic structures on the glass substrate. We demonstrate that the shape and lateral size of the resulting functional plasmonic nanostructures depends on the laser pulse energy and metal film thickness, while subsequent Ar+-ion polishing enables to vary height of the resulting nanostructures. The plasmonic properties of the fabricated nanostructures were characterized by dark-field micro-spectroscopy, Raman and photoluminescence measurements from single nanofeatures, as well as by supporting numerical calculations of the related electromagnetic near-fields and Purcell factors. The developed simple two-stage technique represents a next step towards direct large-scale laser-induced fabrication of highly-ordered arrays of complex plasmonic nanostructures.