Tunable Hybrid Metal-Nitride Metamaterial Framework towards Plasmonic Sensing

The advances on hybrid metamaterial design using bottom-up fabrication technique bring multiple advantages toward sensing and large-scale nanophotonic device integration. In our work, a two-phase plasmonic framework with Au nanoantenna arrays being embedded inside a titanium nitride (TiN) matrix was demonstrated, with easy access of controlling the packing density or aspect ratio. Advantages include sub-10 nm nanoantenna arrays, high crystalline quality, inch-scale throughput as well as high durability. Such geometrical flexibility brings tunable resonance frequency and anisotropic dielectric dispersion at optical regime. We demonstrate effective molecular sensing affected by the surface-enhanced plasmonic substrate with built-in Au antenna array. Our functional hybrid thin film template, as a first step, can be applied to multiple three-dimensional metamaterial designs. We will show some of our latest research progress on nanostructures and applications using such hybrid template.