Beautiful plasmonic nanostructures in Al and Ag !

Many applications of plasmonics would be unleashed if we were able to fabricate plasmonics nanostructures in silver and aluminum a reliable manner. Unfortunately, those metals are difficult to handle, especially for nanofabrication based on a lift-off approach. We have developed a novel recipe for high yield and high quality nanofabrication of silver and aluminum nanostructures with features down to 10 nm. The degradation of silver oxide to activate the surface forms the basis of the idea. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ellipsometry are used for chemical and optical characterization of the deposited thin films.