Structure and Optical Property Prediction of 2D Plasmonic Photonic Crystals Fabricated by Shadow Sphere Lithography

Shadow sphere lithography (SSL) is a powerful and large-scale fabrication method to produce two-dimensional (2D) plasmonic photonic crystals and three-dimensional metamaterials. Practically, one of the biggest challenges for SSL-based fabrications is that it is hard to accurately predict the physical properties of the fabricated nanostructures if the structures were only modeled by the geometric shadowing effect. A Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is developed to show that the dynamic shadowing effect due to the accumulation of materials on the template as well as the thin-film growth mechanism plays a key role in determining the structure details. For a one-to-three step-based SSL fabrication, the nanostructures predicted by MC match very well with those produced experimentally, and the plasmonic properties predicted by these MC-simulated structures are also consistent with the features obtained experimentally, both qualitative and semi-quantitative. This study indicates a possible solution to use MC simulation and numerical calculation to guide the design of the plasmonic photonic crystals and metamaterials based on SSL for optic applications.

Automated summary

Shadow sphere lithography is a powerful method for fabricating nanostructures and has potential applications in producing plasmonic photonic crystals and metamaterials. This study shows that Monte Carlo simulation is effective in predicting the structure details and plasmonic properties, providing guidance for the design of optical applications based on shadow sphere lithography.