Fabrication of sub-10 nm gap arrays over large areas for plasmonic sensors

We report a high-throughput method for the fabrication of metallic nanogap arrays with high-accuracy over large areas. This method, based on shadow evaporation and interference lithography, achieves sub-10 nm gap sizes with a high accuracy of +/- 1.5 nm. Controlled fabrication is demonstrated over mm(2) areas and for periods of 250 nm. Experiments complemented with numerical simulations indicate that the formation of nanogaps is a robust, self-limiting process that can be applied to wafer-scale substrates. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) experiments illustrate the potential for plasmonic sensing with an exceptionally low standard-deviation of the SERS signal below 3% and average enhancement factors exceeding 1 x 10(6). (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3672045]