Metal nanoparticles exhibit unique optical properties due to the localized plasmonic response in the presence of light. The strong dependence of plasmons on structural properties means metal architectures can be designed to manipulate electromagnetic fields on a remarkably small size scale. We pursue simple approaches to nanoparticle fabrication that lead to plasmonic architectures with broadly tunable optical properties. Aluminum is an abundant material that exhibits optical and material properties that are advantageous as compared to the more typically used gold and silver. However, one of the challenges of using aluminum is that it rapidly forms a terminal oxide layer that complicates fabrication and limits structural control. The copper mask nanosphere template lithography (NTL) process developed in our lab provides a highly versatile approach to aluminum plasmonic architectures with broadly tunable spectral responses from the ultraviolet to the infrared. Using copper mask NTL, we demonstrate fabrication control of chiral and achiral nanostructures with chiro-optical activity that depends on structural details. The ability to access unique architectures as well as investigations of these aluminum plasmonic structures in surface enhanced spectroscopy and circular dichroism spectroscopy will be discussed.

Controlling chirality of aluminum plasmonic architectures based on copper mask nanosphere template lithography

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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