Fabrication of anisotropic metal nanostructures using innovations in template-assisted lithography

Advances in the burgeoning field of plasmonics are increasingly dependent on the ability to fabricate metal nanostructures with precisely defined shapes and orientations, on a scale suitable for technological developments. Recent innovations in top-down lithography have created new windows of opportunity to produce anisotropic metal nanostructures en masse, with near-term applications in photonics, biosensing, and other nanotechnology-enabled pursuits. We focus specifically on C-shaped nanostructures (nanocrescents and split-ring resonators), which can be fabricated by using novel variants of shadow-mask lithography, substrate etching, or microcontact printing.