Hi everyone,
I have recently started to study plasmonics. I was going through few papers in it and found out silver and PMMA are commonly used material in them.Is there any specific reason to widely use these materials ?
Hi Pratyush,
Silver is widely used in plasmonics because it is a noble metal which can support surface plasmons. Keeping in mind that all metallic plasmonic structures possess Ohmic losses, the choice of a particular metal depends on the specific purpose of your device. For example, to prevent strong electromagnetic field attenuation in a plasmonic waveguide, one should choose a metal with the lowest losses at the wavelength of interest.
As for the PMMA, I think that it is widely used in hybrid and planar plasmonic devices due to its high optical transparency, high flexibility, biocompatibility and good processability [Ma, H., Jen, A. K.-Y. & Dalton, L. R. Polymer-based optical waveguides: materials, processing, and devices. Adv. Mater. 14, 1339–1365 (2002)].
Article ChemInform Abstract: Alternative Plasmonic Materials: Beyond...
please read that paper you can understand everything clearly
In plasmonics one of major property is surface plasmons which can be exhibited only when metals are present. Other than silver, gold is also popular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_plasmon
Variety of applications are reported through this. Similarly based on certain application, free-standing metal structure are difficult to fabricated. So dielectric layer with index 1.5 is commonly used. PMMA falls in that category. Since PMMA properties are well know (either on lithography side or optics side), it is very easy to handle.
There are lot of literature. Please read.
I hope this might help.
Silver, gold and copper can act as plasmonic metal. One can use specific metal as required by the particular experiment. PMMA are material having well established properties and is used for making nano structure on it. Free standing nanostructres of plasmonic metal is not possible. In this case PMMA layer is useful.
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