Effect of V-shape on the light transmission of subwavelength slits in metallic thin films

Currently, the focused ion beam milling (FIB) technique is a commonly used approach to fabricate nanostructures because of its unique advantages of one-step fabrication, nanoscale resolution, and no material selectivity, etc. However, the FIB technique also has its own disadvantages. Regarding the process of fabrication of the corrugations and subwavelength apertures, nowadays, there is a major problem: the V-shaped structuring. In this work, we discuss the influence of V-shape on the optical transmission of subwavelength slits designed in silver (Ag) and gold (Au) thin films possessing different thicknesses. The effect of different cone angles (ratio between the widths at the incidence plane and at the exit plane) originated from the V-shaped slits was also considered. We had performed computational simulations carried out with COMSOL Multiphysics® to investigate the slits optical transmission. In most cases, the subwavelength slits were illuminated with 488 nm (for Ag) and 632.8 nm (for Au) wavelength light sources in TM polarization (magnetic H-field component parallel to the axis of the slits). The origin of the slits transmission is attributed to plasmonic surface excitations. Our simulation results demonstrated that different cone angles originated from the Vshaped subwavelength slits generate different influences on the beam propagation. The width variation affects the optical transmission intensity significantly. Hopefully, exploring the influence on the light propagation behaviour through subwavelength apertures via theoretical simulations can provide a better understanding of the beam propagation phenomena for future studies.