Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Ultrathin Wetting Layer-Free Plasmonic Gold Films

Published

Author(s)

Robert Lemasters, Cheng Zhang, Manoj Manjare, Wenqi Zhu, Junyeob Song, Sergei Urazhdin, Henri Lezec, Amit Agrawal, Hayk Harutyunyan

Abstract

Ultrathin gold films are attractive for plasmonic and metamaterial devices, thanks to their useful optical and optoelectronic properties. However, deposition of ultrathin continuous Au films of few nanometer thickness is challenging and generally requires wetting layers, resulting in increased optical losses and incompatibility with optoelectronic device requirements. We demonstrate wetting-layer free plasmonic gold films with thicknesses down to 3 nm obtained by deposition on substrates cooled to cryogenic temperatures. We systematically study the effect of substrate temperature on the properties of the deposited Au films, and show that substrate cooling suppresses the Vomer-Webber growth mode of Au, promoting early-stage formation of continuous Au films with improved surface morphology and enhanced optoelectronic properties. Our results pave the way for straightforward implementation of ultrathin Au-based optoelectronic and plasmonic devices, as well as metamaterials and metasurfaces.
Citation
ACS Photonics
Volume
6
Issue
11

Citation

Lemasters, R. , Zhang, C. , Manjare, M. , Zhu, W. , Song, J. , Urazhdin, S. , Lezec, H. , Agrawal, A. and Harutyunyan, H. (2019), Ultrathin Wetting Layer-Free Plasmonic Gold Films, ACS Photonics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00907, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=928329 (Accessed November 9, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created October 2, 2019, Updated October 12, 2021