Plasmonic Films Can Easily Be Better: Rules and Recipes

TL;DR

This paper provides practical rules and recipes for depositing high-quality plasmonic metal films using common equipment, addressing common pitfalls and enabling improved performance in plasmonics research.

Contribution

It introduces simple, surface-science-based guidelines and deposition recipes for aluminum, copper, gold, and silver films to enhance plasmonic device quality.

Findings

High-quality plasmonic films can be reliably produced with simple rules.

Proper deposition conditions significantly improve optical properties.

Accessible recipes enable routine fabrication of optimal plasmonic films.

Abstract

High-quality materials are critical for advances in plasmonics, especially as researchers now investigate quantum effects at the limit of single surface plasmons or exploit ultraviolet- or CMOS-compatible metals such as aluminum or copper. Unfortunately, due to inexperience with deposition methods, many plasmonics researchers deposit metals under the wrong conditions, severely limiting performance unnecessarily. This is then compounded as others follow their published procedures. In this perspective, we describe simple rules collected from the surface-science literature that allow high-quality plasmonic films of aluminum, copper, gold, and silver to be easily deposited with commonly available equipment (a thermal evaporator). Recipes are also provided so that films with optimal optical properties can be routinely obtained.