Atomically flat single-crystalline gold nanostructures for plasmonic nanocircuitry

摘要: Deep subwavelength integration of high-definition plasmonic nanostructures is key importance in the development future optical nanocircuitry for high-speed communication, quantum computation and lab-on-a-chip applications. To date, experimental realization proposed extended networks consisting multiple functional elements remains challenging, mainly because multi-crystallinity commonly used thermally evaporated gold layers. This can produce structural imperfections individual circuit that drastically reduce yield integrated nanocircuits. In this paper we demonstrate use large (>100 μm(2)) but thin (<80 nm) chemically grown single-crystalline flakes that, after immobilization, serve as an ideal basis focused ion beam milling other top-down nanofabrication techniques on any desired substrate. Using methodology obtain ultrasmooth with superior properties reproducible nano-sized features over micrometre-length scales. Our approach provides a possible solution to overcome current fabrication bottleneck realize nanocircuitry.