High-throughput nanofabrication of infrared plasmonic nanoantenna arrays for vibrational nanospectroscopy.

The introduction of high-throughput and high-resolution nanofabrication techniques operating at low cost and low complexity is essential for the advancement of nanoplasmonic and nanophotonic fields. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel fabrication approach based on nanostencil lithography for high-throughput fabrication of engineered infrared plasmonic nanorod antenna arrays. The technique relying on deposition of materials through a shadow mask enables plasmonic substrates supporting spectrally sharp collective resonances. We show that reflectance spectra of these antenna arrays are comparable to that of arrays fabricated by electron beam lithography. We also show that nanostencils can be reused multiple times to fabricate a series of infrared nanoantenna arrays with identical optical responses. Finally, we demonstrate fabrication of plasmonic nanostructures in a variety of shapes with a single metal deposition step on different substrates, including nonconducting ones. Our approach, by enabling the reusability of the stencil and offering flexibility on the substrate choice and nanopattern design, could facilitate the transition of plasmonic technologies to the real-world applications.