Metal-Dielectric-Metal Resonators with Deep Subwavelength Dielectric Layers Increase the Near-Field SEIRA Enhancement

Published

September 24, 2015

Author(s)

Jungseok Chae, Basudev Lahiri, John M. Kohoutek, Glenn Holland, Henri Lezec, Andrea Centrone

Abstract

Plasmonic nanostructures presenting either structural asymmetry or metal-dielectric-metal (M-D-M) architecture are commonly used structures to increase the quality factor and the near-field confinement in plasmonic materials. This characteristic can be leveraged for example to increase the sensitivity of IR spectroscopy, via the surface enhanced IR absorption (SEIRA) effect. In this work, we combine structural asymmetry with the M-D-M architecture to realize Ag-Ag2O-Ag asymmetric ring resonators (ASRRs) where two Ag layer sandwich a native silver oxide (Ag2O) layer. Their IR response is compared with the one of fully metallic (Ag) ASRRs of the same size and shape. The photothermal induced resonance technique (PTIR) is used to obtain near-filed SEIRA absorption maps and spectra with nanoscale resolution. Although the native Ag2O layer is only 1 nm to 2 nm thick, it increases the quality factor of the plasmon excitation by ≈ 20 % and the SEIRA enhancement by ≈ 44 % with respect to entirely Ag structures.

Citation

Optics Express

Volume

23

Issue

20

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.025912

Local Download

Citation

Chae, J. , Lahiri, B. , Kohoutek, J. , Holland, G. , Lezec, H. and Centrone, A. (2015), Metal-Dielectric-Metal Resonators with Deep Subwavelength Dielectric Layers Increase the Near-Field SEIRA Enhancement, Optics Express, [online], https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.025912, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=918644 (Accessed October 9, 2025)