Nanofabrication and Evanescent Light Enhancement by Surface Plasmon

Metallic nanostructure gratings made up of GaP substrate and covered by gold thin film have been designed and fabricated in order to enhance the near-field light waves emitted from 30-nm apertures in the thin metallic film for throughput-efficiency increments, thereby utilizing the surface plasmon resonance effect with the nanofabricated metallic grating pitch. Theoretical analysis herein emphasizes 3-D simulation using the finite-difference time-domain method. It also experimentally shows that the near-field light from a 30-nm aperture encased in fine pitch corrugated gold thin film creates an enhancement of resonance intensity. The evanescent light output was enhanced up to 1.5% of the input linear polarized laser light without using any microlens-focused laser beam