FIB-fabricated complex-shaped 3D chiral photonic silicon nanostructures

Technologies capable of fabricating complex shaped silicon metasurfaces attract increasing attention. The focused ion beam fabrication technique is considered traditionally as causing thick damaged layers in silicon resulting in a significant rise of the optical absorption loss. We examine the structure of the FIB-fabricated nanostructures on the silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) platform and its optical characteristics before and after thermal oxidation. We show that being thermally oxidised the FIB-patterned silicon subwavelength nanostructure tends to regain its chiral optical features. The impact of the oxidation process on the silicon nanostructure optical behaviour is discussed.