An inkjet printing technique to spatially vary the conductivity in plasmonic structures

Terahertz plasmonic structures with spatially varying conductivity are created using a commercially available inkjet printer. Two nanoparticles inks silver and carbon are used simultaneously to achieve the spatial variation of conductivity. Using a periodic hole array pattern as test structures, the pattern with different fraction of silver content show different enhanced optical transmission properties. These differences arise from changes in the propagation loss properties as a function of conductivity. The resulting plasmonic effect is found to dramatically alter the spatial beam profile of the transmitted THz radiation as measured by THz imaging.