Design and fabrication of resonant nanoantennas on chalcogenide glasses for nonlinear photonic applications

Abstract

Optical nanoantennas are the metallic nanostructures which confine electromagnetic waves into sub-wavelength volumes at resonant conditions. They are used for various applications including biological and chemical sensing, single molecule spectroscopy, manipulation and generation of light. Combining extremely large electromagnetic field enhancement in plasmonic resonant nanoantenna with high optical nonlinearity of chalcogenide glass leads to a low-threshold broadband light generation scheme in sub-wavelength chip-scale structures. New frequency generation with ultra-low pumping power in plasmonic nanostructures allows compact on-chip light sources which can find applications in single molecule spectroscopy, optical signal processing and broadband lasers. We propose plasmonic nanoantenna chalcogenide glass systems for initiating nonlinear phenomena at low threshold. Size and shape of antennas are optimized according to linear refractive index of substrate and surrounding media for this purpose by finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations. Resonant behaviour of antennas at their near-field and nonlinear response of optically highly nonlinear chalcogenide glasses are investigated. On resonance, strong field accumulation at the interface of the gold stripe and highly nonlinear As2Se3 glass triggers a start of the spectral broadening of incident beam accompanied by third harmonic generation at an ultra-low threshold power level of 3 W/µm2 . Moreover, we fabricate the designed structures by electron beam lithography, wet chemical techniques and optimize each fabrication step of processes by several experiments. Fabrication steps are explained and SEM images of related steps are presented.