Electron-beam lithography of plasmonic nanorod arrays for multilayered optical storage

In this paper we demonstrate multilayer fabrication of plasmonic gold nanorod arrays using electron-beam lithography (EBL), and show that this structure could be used for multilayered optical storage media capable of continuous-wave (cw) laser readout. The gold nanorods fabricated using the EBL method are aligned perfectly and homogeneous in size and shape, allowing the polarization response of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to be observed through ensemble array. This property in turn permits polarization detuned SPR readout possible and other manipulations such as progressively twisted arrays through the multilayers to make cw readout possible through deeper layers without too much extinction loss. The layered gold nanorod arrays are separated by thick spacer layer to enable the optical resolving of individual layers. Using this method, we demonstrated four-fold reduction in extinction loss for cw readout in three-layer structure. The current technique of multilayer fabrication and readout can be useful in 3-dimensional fabrication of plasmonic circuits and structures.