Industrial fabrication of an optical security device for document protection using plasmon resonant transmission through a thin corrugated metallic film embedded on a plastic foil

Known since a long time in polymer banknotes and presented in the few years in paper banknotes, the principle of windowed documents has been currently extended to ID documents. We present an innovative solution which combines resonant transmission and Zero Order Device technologies and which is dedicated to improve windows in terms of the overt security level. With this R&D program, Hologram Industries targeted to obtain an overt visual security device that should be readily checked in transmission in the same manner as the established paper watermark. The proposed solution is based on the propagation of resonant modes in a thin continuous corrugated metallic layer embedded (encapsulated) between two dielectric layers of near equal refractive index. The mode of most interest is the Long Range Plasmon Mode. The coupling condition to the Long Range Mode is principally related to the corrugation, the metal layer thickness and the index of the two dielectric layers. If the condition of the mode excitation through the grating is fulfilled, a predetermined wavelength will be coupled to the Long Range Plasmon Mode. This mode will propagate at each metal/dielectric interface with a low loss and will concentrate the electric field inside the metal layer. This effect of coupling enables the transmission of a peak at this wavelength through the metallic layer. It defines the so called "extraordinary resonant transmission".