Strongly coupled evenly divided disks: a new compact and tunable platform for plasmonic Fano resonances

Plasmonic artificial molecules are promising platforms for linear and nonlinear optical modulation at various regimes including the visible, infrared and terahertz bands. Fano resonances in plasmonic artificial structures are widely used for controlling spectral lineshapes and tailoring of near-field and far-field optical response. Generation of a strong Fano resonance usually relies on strong plasmon coupling in densely packed plasmonic structures. Challenges in reproducible fabrication using conventional lithography significantly hinders the exploration of novel plasmonic nanostructures for strong Fano resonance. In this work, we propose a new class of plasmonic molecules with symmetric structure for Fano resonances, named evenly divided disk, which shows a strong Fano resonance due to the interference between a subradiant anti-bonding mode and a superradiant bonding mode. We successfully fabricated evenly divided disk structures with high reproducibility and with sub-20 nm gaps, using our recently developed sketch and peel lithography technique. The experimental spectra agree well with the calculated response, indicating the robustness of the Fano resonance for the evenly divided disk geometry. Control experiments reveal that the strength of the Fano resonance gradually increases when increasing the number of split parts on the disk from three to eight individual segments. The Fano-resonant plasmonic molecules that can also be reliably defined by our unique fabrication approach open up new avenues for application and provide insight into the design of artificial molecules for controlling light-matter interactions.