Plasmon resonances in deep nanogrooves of reflective metal gratings

Metallic gratings with very deep and narrow grooves are fabricated and their reflection spectra are characterized, which explicitly show high-order standing-wave-like resonances of surface plasmons in the cavity of nanogrooves. The effect of in-plane surface plasmon resonance is also observed, which is shown to have only a minor role on the reflection of such gratings, unlike that for shallow gratings. Using numerical simulations, the cavity resonances and their effects on the reflection of the gratings are identified and further analyzed. As field is more enhanced in the nanogrooves under cavity resonance conditions, the enhancement is also found to be dependent on the grating period, i.e. the strongest enhancement takes place for higher-order resonance modes for smaller grating period. For gratings with shallower grooves, comparable enhancement of field is also achievable by proper design of the grating period. The study suggests that field enhancement can be realized at selective wavelengths in a wide spectrum range using cavity resonances in the deep nanogrooves of metal gratings, and the position for field-enhancement can be tuned by the depth and period of the gratings. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.