Enhanced lasing action and spontaneous emission in periodic plasmonic nanohole arrays

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple fabrication method for periodic plasmonic nanohole arrays that significantly enhance lasing and spontaneous emission, offering a cost-effective alternative to electron beam lithography.

Contribution

The authors introduce a low-cost, scalable fabrication technique combining shadowing nanosphere lithography and electron beam deposition for nanohole arrays with enhanced photonic properties.

Findings

Lasing emission in organic dye medium is enhanced with a quality factor above 150.

A 7-fold increase in Purcell factor is achieved for CdSe quantum dots.

The method provides a scalable alternative to traditional nanofabrication techniques.

Abstract

Periodic arrays of air nanoholes in thin metal films that support surface plasmon resonances can provide an alternative approach for boosting the light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. Indeed, nanohole arrays have garnered great interest in recent years for their use in biosensing, light emission enhancement and spectroscopy. However, the large-scale use of nanohole arrays in emerging technology requires new low-cost fabrication techniques. Here, we demonstrate a simple technique to fabricate nanohole arrays and examine their photonic applications. In contrast to the complicated and most commonly used electron beam lithography technique, hexagonal arrays of nanoholes are fabricated by using a simple combination of shadowing nanosphere lithography technique and electron beam deposition. These arrays are shown to offer enhancements in the lasing emission of an organic dye liquid gain medium with a quality factor above 150. Additionally, a 7-fold increase in Purcell factor is observed for CdSe quantum dot-integrated nanohole arrays.