Nanofabrication results of a novel cascaded plasmonic superlens: lessons learned

To learn about the challenges, difficulties and technological steps in fabrication of a metal lens, a cascaded plasmonic superlens was fabricated in this paper and then its subwavelength imaging capability is demonstrated. First, we developed separately the fabrication and characterization procedures for each part in the cascaded superlens structure (composed of a planar plasmonic lens and a double layer meander structure) to show the precise fabricating process and results. Then the two parts of the cascaded structure were stacked together on the top of a double-slit object. First a larger slit width of 400 nm and a slit distance of 800 nm were used for easily obtaining a larger transmittance intensity distribution. The results show a good agreement between the experiment and simulation. Then a double-slit with width of 100 nm and distance of 180 nm were used to further test the resolving power of the superlens. The captured images show that the desired subwavelength resolution in the far field can be realized with the fabricated superlens.

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