Two-Photon Polymerization and application to Surface Plasmon Polaritons

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• Publisher: Cuvillier Verlag
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9783867276627
• eBook ISBN: 9783736926622
• Edition: 1

Plasmonics is a large part of the field of nanophotonics. Besides a wide rangeof industrial applications already developed, e.g. enhanced biosensors and diodes, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are still an expanding field of research.In conventional optics, working on the sub-wavelength scale is not trivial, andstructures smaller than half the wavelength will not lead to results expected bytraditional optics. State-of-the-art microchips and optical data storage devices arefabricated at the limit of conventional optics. SPPs could open up the way tosub-wavelength optics far beyond the diffraction limit as demonstrated by Ebbesenin 1998. The length scales for SPPs span over seven orders of magnitude, fromseveral nanometers, the penetration depth into metal, to several centimeters, thepropagation length of long range plasmons, making them very interesting objectsfor investigation.The subject of this thesis is the investigation on dielectric loaded surface plasmonpolariton waveguides (DLSPPWs). DLSPPWs are theoretically analysed by computationalsimulations at telecommunication wavelength at 1550nm. The waveguidesare experimentally examined using leakage radiation microscopy for 632nmand 800nm wavelength. The experimental results are compared with simulationresults of corresponding wavelengths. Furthermore, SPP structures like bends andY-splitters are investigated. A novel cut-splitter design for an SPP Y-splitter isintroduced and compared to existing designs. For the cut-splitter an improved efficiencyand a better tolerance against fabrication imperfections due to limited resolutionthan for conventional Y-splitter designs is demonstrated through experimentalinvestigations and simulations.For the fabrication of DLSPPWs, 2-Photon Polymerization (2PP) is, because ofits high flexibility and low costs compared to other nanostructuring technologies, and easy adaptability. Since the first publication about 2-Photon-Polymerizationby S. Kawata in 1997, the interest and research in this technology has been continuouslyincreasing. Progress in this technique has been mainly initiated by scientificinterest for use as a rapid prototyping technology. To transfer the 2PP technologyto industrial applications, a novel structuring system is developed and set up duringthis work. The 2PP writing speed is increased by a factor of about 100, compared toresults in other publications. Three-dimensional structures with resolutions smallerthan 300nm are reproducible fabricated with writing speeds of about 30mm/s.