Fabrication of plasmonic surface relief gratings for the application of band-pass filter in UV-Visible spectral range

Abstract

The measured experimental results of optical diffraction of 10, 5 and 3.4 micrometer period plasmonic surface relief grating are presented for the application of band-pass filter in visible spectral range. Conventional scanning electron microscopic (SEM) is used to fabricate the grating structures on the silver halide based film (substrate) by exposing the electron beam in raster scan fashion. Morphological characterization of the gratings is performed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) shows that the period, height and profile depends on the line per frame, beam spot, single line dwell time, beam current, and accelerating voltage of the electron beam. Optical transmission spectra of 10 micrometer period grating shows a well-defined localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) dip at ~366 nm wavelength corresponding to gelatin embedded silver nanoparticles of the grating structure. As the period of the grating reduces LSPR dip becomes prominent. The maximum first order diffraction efficiency (DE) and bandwidth for 10 micrometer period grating are observed as 4% and 400 nm in 350 nm to 800 nm wavelength range respectively. The DE and bandwidth are reduced up to 0.03% and 100 nm for 3.4 micrometer period grating. The profile of DE is significantly flat within the diffraction bandwidth for each of the gratings. An assessment of the particular role of LSPR absorption and varied grating period in the development of the profile of first order DE v/s wavelength are studied. Fabrication of such nano-scale structures in a large area using conventional SEM and silver halide based films may provide the simple and efficient technique for various optical devices applications.