Ultrasonic Spray Coating as a Fast Alternative Technique for the Deposition of Hybrid Magnetic-Plasmonic Nanocomposites

Advanced applications in optics, for example, Faraday isolators, demand for complex magneto-plasmonic nanostructures which exhibit large Faraday rotation. These structures is fabricated by a Layer-by-Layer approach, albeit this being a slow technique. Here, the ultrasonic spray coating as a promising alternative method toward the formation of hybrid magneto-plasmonic structures is pioneered by the authors. Ultrasonic spray coating is a stable, fast, and tunable mass production method applied in this work to deposit gold and iron oxide nanoparticles. Altering multiple deposition parameters give the spray coating technique a large amount of control over the coverage. Optical and magneto-optical properties, layer formation and surface coverage of single and hybrid layers with increasing thickness and number of layers are studied and compared to samples synthesized by Layer-by-Layer deposition. Ultrasonic spray coating paves the way to the widespread application of innovative and versatile hybrid magnetic-plasmonic nanocomposites.