Femtosecond direct laser writing of gold nanostructures by ionic liquid assisted multiphoton photoreduction

Amino-terminated ionic liquid assisted multiphoton photoreduction (IL-MPR) was developed for the direct writing of subwavelength gold nanostructures in AuCl4- ions aqueous solution by femtosecond laser. It was revealed that the carbon chain length was crucial for morphology and size control of gold nanostructures. A 228 nm width of gold nanostructure, which was beyond the optical diffraction limit, was fabricated by the matching between IL and the power and scanning speed of the laser beam. The measured conductivity is of the same order as that of bulk gold. Furthermore, we successfully fabricated a U-shaped terahertz planar metamaterial whose spectral response is consistent with the theoretical expectation. The IL-MPR nanofabrication protocol is expected to play an important role in the fabrication of fine metallic micro/nanostructures for applications in microelectromechanical systems, nanoelectronics and nanophotonics. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America