Ruiying Shi

Surface-plasmon-polaritons-assisted nanolithography with dual-wavelength illumination for high exposure depth.

We propose a new direct writing nanolithography approach using a plasmonic focusing device and a nano silver mirror with dual-wavelength illumination for high exposure depth. Arrays of pyramid aperture are used to focus the incident light beams into 80 nm light spots. The pyramid combined with a thin silver film coated on the substrate constructs a surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) coupling cavity, which amplifies the intensity of the light field in it by SPP effect and resonance. The transmission depth of the standing wave formed by forward and reflected light could reach hundreds of nanometers. Two lasers with different wavelengths are used as illumination sources to homogenize the light field through complementation between the two standing waves. Simulation results show by using 355 nm and 441 nm wavelengths, a space of 44 nm at the bottom of the photoresist could be obtained after exposure and development. The feature size of resist patterns could be further scaled down, depending on the optimization of parameters of photoresist exposure and development, illumination wavelengths, etc.

Polarization conversion based on plasmonic phase control by an ultra-thin metallic nano-strips

Ultra-thin metallic nano-strips (thinner than skin depth) can lead to anomalous reflection for a transverse magnetic (TM) incidence of some wave-lengths, due to the phase modulation of localized surface plasmon resonance. Based on the principle above, we proposed a method of polarization modulation using ultra-thin metallic nano-strips. When irradiating nano-strips vertically by light with a given polarized angle, we can utilize the phase difference of the TM transmission and transverse electric (TE) transmission near anomalous reflection region to modulate transmission polarization. We have designed and fabricated the ultra-thin metallic nano-strips with the function of quarter-wave plate, the attained transmission Stokes parameter S3 is 0.95. The nano-strips is easy to design and fabricate, also compatible with other optics devices, hence has the potential applications in integrated optics field.