Design and fabrication of gold nanostructures with dispersed nanospheres for localized surface plasmon resonance applications

The design and fabrication of gold nanostructures through nanosphere lithography utilizing dispersed nanospheres, on glass substrate for the applications of localized surface plasmon resonance, were investigated in detail. The fabrication of the nanostructures was realized through the gold film deposition onto nanospheres dispersed on a substrate and the subsequent directional gold etching. Depending on the deposition and etching conditions of the gold, a variety of gold nanostructures can be fabricated. So far through this method, only 2D nanocrescents had been reported. However, either 2D or 3D non-conformal nanostructures are formed in this way, and the profiles of the obtainable nanostructures were simulated under various conditions. For nanostructures fabricated on glass, the simulated profiles coincided well with the fabricated ones. These results prove that our profile simulation program can realize the design of 2D and 3D nanostructures obtainable by dispersed nanospheres, and reduce the effort and cost for achieving desired nanostructures by experiments in the trial-and-error stage.