large scale optical nanostructures using ultrathin silver film

Abstract

Optical nanostructures have been actively applied to diverse nanodevices for nanoscale imaging and lithography, illumination system with high efficiency, ultrathin display system with high resolution, and bio-sensing with high efficiency due to their unique abilities such as antireflection, negative index, and plasmonic resonance. However, the lack of scalable nanofabrication method with a low cost disturbs the practical and common uses of optical nanostructures. This study presents diverse optical nanostructures on a large area by using ultrathin silver film. First, large scale silver nanoholes and nanoislands were studied based on the solid-state dewetting and oblique angle deposition. Next, the glass nanohole arrays was developed for mechanically stable antireflective structures based on silver nanoholes. At last, the optically patternable metamaterial was developed to overcome the diffraction limit based on the surface plasmon excitation, i.e., the superlens effect. Ultraviolet nanolithography was demonstrated by using the optically patternable metamaterial and a conventional photolithography system. The large scale optical nanostructures such as antireflective structures and optically patternable metamaterials based on ultrathin silver film will provide practical applications of nanodevices including nanolithography/imaging, high efficient illumination/imaging lens, plasmonic spectral filter, and bio-sensing with high efficiency.