Maskless fabrication of plasmonic metasurfaces in polymer film using a spatial light modulator

We demonstrate a high-speed optical technique to fabricate plasmonic metasurfaces in a polymer film. The technique is based on a programmable spatial light modulator, which is used to spatially control the photoreduction sites of gold ions in a polyvinyl alcohol film doped with a gold precursor. After irradiation, annealing was used to induce the growth of nanoparticles, producing plasmonic microstructures. Using a 473 nm excitation wavelength, microscopic plasmonic gratings, and meta-atom arrays with arbitrary orientations, an effective nanostructure size of similar to 700 nm and constituent nanoparticles with average size of similar to 37 nm were created. The technique enables a cost-effective and straightforward light-based approach to fabricate plasmonic metasurfaces with tunable properties. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America

Automated summary

A high-speed optical technique for fabricating plasmonic metasurfaces in polymer films was demonstrated using a programmable spatial light modulator to control photoreduction sites of gold ions. After irradiation and annealing, nanoparticle growth was induced to create plasmonic microstructures with tunable properties. This cost-effective and straightforward light-based approach enables the creation of plasmonic metasurfaces with arbitrary orientations.