Wafer-Scale Aluminum Nanoplasmonic Resonators with Optimized Metal Deposition

Spectroscopic ellipsometry is demonstrated to be an effective technique for assessing the quality of plasmonic resonances within aluminum nanostructures deposited with multiple techniques. The resonance quality of nanoplasmonic aluminum arrays is shown to be strongly dependent on the method of aluminum deposition. Three-layer metal-dielectric-metal nanopillar arrays were fabricated in a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor facility, with the arrays of nanopillars separated from a continuous metal underlayer by a thin dielectric spacer, to provide optimum field enhancement. Nanostructures patterned in optimized aluminum, which had been deposited with a high-temperature sputtering process followed by chemical mechanical planarization, display different resonance and depolarization behavior than nanostructures deposited by the more conventional evaporation process. Full plasmonic band diagrams are mapped over a wide range of incidence angles and wavelengths using spectroscopic ellipsometry and compared between aluminum nanostructures fabricated with two methods. The resonators fabricated from optimized aluminum exhibit a narrower bandwidth of both plasmonic resonance and depolarization parameters, indicating a higher quality resonance due to a stronger localization of the electric field. The optimized wafer-scale aluminum plasmonics fabrication should provide a pathway toward better quality devices for sensing and light detection in the ultraviolet and blue parts of the spectrum.