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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 60: Poster Session IV (Solid/liquid interfaces; Semiconductors; Oxides and insulators; Graphene; Plasmonics and nanooptics; Electronic Structure; Surface chemical reactions; Heterogeneous catalysis)

O 60.60: Poster

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 17:30–21:00, P4

Cutting gold nanoantennas by focused ion beams — •Daniel Weber¹, Frank Neubrech¹, Han Gui², Dominik Enders², Tadaaki Nagao², and Annemarie Pucci¹ — ¹Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, Heidelberg, Germany — ²National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba , Japan

Gold nanowires (nanoantennas) are plasmonic particles of great interest due to the possibility of tuning their ability to strongly enhance the local electromagnetic field from the THz to the visible range by mainly changing the length. Furthermore, coupling of nanoparticles can lead to even higher enhancement of the local field compared to invidual particles. One very promising approach is an arrangement of two nanoantennas which are separated by a very small gap (few nm) between their tip ends. We tried to prepare such nanosized gaps by applying focused ion beam (FIB) milling. Stripe-like, polycrystalline gold nanoantennas were produced by electron beam lithography on silicon wafers and subsequently cut in the middle by FIB. It turned out that the question if the nanoantennas are really separated cannot be answered by scanning electron microscopy or FIB imaging. However, measuring the infrared optical response of such prepared dimers provides a non-contacting, non-destructive, and easy method to prove the successful cut. Alternative methods like cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy were also applied to confirm the findings from IR spectroscopic measurements.