Nanostructured Films for Metrology
Thin films of gold and silver, perforated with nanoholes and nanoslits have many applications in plasmonics, metamaterials and hyper lenses etc. Using FIB one can make reasonably large arrays of these elementary nanostructures with minimal time for process development. Here, in the Fig. 8, an array of nanoholes with varying pitches, milled directly into a freestanding bilayer of Au/Si3N4 membrane is shown. The FIB is a perfect method for patterning on unconventional or delicate substrates such as these free standing membranes or optical fiber tips.
Fig8: An array of nanoholes drilled into a free-standing Au/Si3N4 bi-layer using a focused ion beam can be seen.