Waveguiding and plasmon resonances in two-dimensional photonic lattices of gold and silver nanowires

We report the fabrication of triangular lattices of parallel gold and silver nanowires of high optical quality, with diameters down to 500 nm and length-to-diameter ratios as high as 100 000. The nanowires are supported by a silica glass matrix and are disposed around a central solid glass core, i.e., a missing nanowire. These centimeter-long structures make it possible to trap light within an array of nanowires and characterize the plasmon resonances that form at specific optical frequencies. Such nanowire arrays have many potential applications, e.g., imaging on the subwavelength scale.