Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 40: [O] Plasmonics and Nanooptics V (Joint Session DS/O/HL)

DS 40.3: Talk

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 11:00–11:15, H32

Electromagnetic field enhancement at nanostructured surfaces — •Natalia Garcia Rey and Heike Arnolds — Surface Science Research Centre, University of Liverpool, Oxford Street, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK

Metal surfaces with nanometer scale roughness have been found to be photochemically more active than flat surfaces. This is believed to be caused by the excitation of surface plasmons, which create enhanced electromagnetic fields at the surface.

In this contribution, we explore the field enhancement obtainable from sub-wavelength periodic ripple structures created by argon ion sputtering in UHV, where we model the ripple surface structure as quasi-sinusoidal and solve Maxwell's equations in 2D with the help of finite-element modelling. We calculate the average surface field enhancement for various substrates (noble and transition metals) and vary incident wavelength and ripple periodicity and height.

Based on these results we discuss to which degree it is possible to maximize the electric field strengths and in turn the photochemical cross section using simple large-scale surface patterning techniques like sputtering.