Emission-enhanced plasmonic substrates fabricated by nano-imprint lithography

Abstract

We fabricated large-area stacked complementary plasmonic crystals (SC PlCs) by employing ultra-violet (UV) nanoimprint lithography (NIL). The SC PlCs was made on silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates, consisting of three layers: the top layer contacting air was perforated Au film, the bottom layer contacting buried oxide (BOX) layer included Au disk array corresponding to the holes in the top layer, and the middle layer was Si photonic crystal slab. The SC PlCs have prominent resonances in the optical wavelengths. It is shown that the fabricated PlCs were precisely made in structure and well uniform in the optical properties. We have examined photoluminescence (PL) enhancement of dye molecules on the SC PlC substrates in the visible range and found large enhancement up to 100-fold in comparison with the dye molecules on non-processed Si wafers.