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The surface plasmons that are excited by the multiple layer grating structures on the gold thin film are studied using the finite-difference time-domain method in this paper. The structure parameters’ effects on the coupling enhancement of surface plasmons are examined, and the structure design guidelines are given. It is found that the distance between the grating layers and the distance between the gratings and gold thin film are the key structure parameters for better cavity resonances. To have the stronger field enhancements of the excited surface plasmons for the multilayer grating structures, it is found that the width of the gratings should be smaller for the lower grating layers. The multiple layer gratings with proper structure designs can have better performances than single layer grating structure because the cavity effects can enhance the light coupling and more light can be coupled into the surface plasmons by more layers of grating. It is found that the maximum electric field intensity for five layer grating structures can be 163% of the case of the single layer grating structure in our simulations.

Investigated in this paper is the interaction of light and the nanospheres composed by a dielectric core with a gold-shell cladding that causes the optical vortices inside the core and the whirlpools around the shell. Different radius ratios, dimensions and the dielectric functions of nanospheres were studied using the finite-difference time-domain method. It was found that optical vortices were most likely to occur in the regions of increased absorption cross section and reduced scattering cross section. Two optical vortices of the opposite polarity, each centered in one of the particles of a dimer are created by a nanoshell dimer. The surrounding media of a nanoshell with different dielectric functions can be used to affect the energy flows generated by core-shell nanospheres.

Understanding the optical properties of nanometer-scale noble metals is important for the nanoplasmonic devices. The bulk gold and thin film are calculated by density functional theory (DFT) with LDA, PBE, and GLLBSC functionals, respectively. The GLLBSC results for bulk gold are closer to the experimental data because the GLLBSC functional has better descriptions of transition energy. The Im(e) of thin film calculated by LDA and PBE are overestimated. The effects of DFT-based optical properties are performed by conducting electromagnetic simulations. The transmission for the gold thin film by GLLBSC is blue-shifted. The gold grating structure with the GLLBSC-based optical permittivity has strong localized streamlines of Poynting vector in the corner edges at the resonance condition.

The plasmonic 2D W-shape and 3D inverted pyramidal nanostructures with and without the tips are studied. The effects of the tip height and tip tilt angle on the near field enhancement and far field radiation pattern are discussed in this paper. The localized hot spots are found around the pits and the radiation pattern can be affected by the tip structures. The inverted pyramidal nanostructures with and without the tips were fabricated and their reflection spectra and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signals for the chemical molecules thiophenol were measured. The simulation according to the geometry parameters of the fabricated structures is demonstrated. We found that the SERS of our proposed structures with the tips can have stronger light field enhancements than the inverted pyramidal nanostructures without the tips, and the far field radiation pattern can be varied by changing the tip height and tip tilt angle. The study of surface plasmon modes and charge distributions can help the understanding of how to arrange the plasmonic structures to achieve high field enhancement and preferred far field radiation pattern. Our study can be useful for the design of the strong field enhancement SERS substrate with specific far field radiation properties. It can be also applied to the portable Raman detectors for in situ and remote measurements in specific applications.

The discovery of single-molecule sensitivity via surface-enhanced Raman scattering on resonantly excited noble metal nanoparticles has brought an increasing interest in its applications to the molecule detection and identification. Periodic gold bowtie nanostructures have recently been shown to give a large enhancement factor sufficient for single molecule detection. In this work, we simulate the plasmon resonance for periodic gold bowtie nanostructures. The difference between the dipole and the quadrupole resonances is described by examining the magnitude and phase of electric field, the bound surface charge, and the polarization. The gap size dependence of the field enhancement can be interpreted by considering cavity field enhancement. Also, additional enhancement is obtained through the long-range collective photonic effect when the bowtie array periodicity matches the resonance wavelength.

We propose a structure with the metallic and dielectric nanoparticles on the surface of the silicon material and study its optical transmission properties. The structure with the radiuses of the silver and silica nanoparticles as 50 nm and 100 nm, respectively, with the gap as 8 nm between silver and silica nanoparticles is found to have the largest optical transmission into the silicon material in our simulations. The largest field intensities are on the bottom of the silver nanoparticles and these can result strong field scattering into the silicon material. From the plotting of the average power densities around the gaps and the air regions between the silver and silica nanoparticles, the light power can go thorough these regions and flow downward to the silicon material. It is also found that the light energy rotates around the bottom of the silver nanoparticles due to the strong localized surface plasmons. The rectangular arrangement of the nanoparticle structures with mixing metallic and dielectric nanoparticles are studied, and the cases for the structures with only the metallic nanoparticles or only the dielectric nanoparticles are also simulated and compared. The rectangular or hexagonal structures with mixing metallic and dielectric nanoparticles on the surface of the silicon substrate can have better optical transmission than the cases of the rectangular arrangement with only metallic or dielectric nanoparticles.

The focusing properties of the optimized zone plate structures which have upper and lower zones with different thicknesses are studied by the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. Two kinds of materials are chosen, including silver representing metal and BK7 glass representing dielectric. An optimization algorithm is applied to tune the parameters of zone plate structures. Several optimized zone plate structures with smaller circular-shape focus are presented. By using the angular spectrum representation method, we found that the cases with smaller focal sizes have larger high-k components; however, the intensities of side lobes also become larger in comparison with the main beam. It is also found that the phase differences between different spatial field components can have the influences on focusing properties. A special case with two focuses is shown by changing the cost function of the same optimization algorithm. Our findings suggest that the optimized zone plate structures can reconstruct the light intensity distribution and have a great potential for the applications in imaging, lithography, and data storage.

The field properties of Fresnel zone plates with wavelength-scale focal distances were numerically investigated using the finite-difference time-domain method. The fields in the focal planes are analyzed using the angular spectrum representation, and the components of the propagating and evanescent waves are reconstructed. It was found that, in the focal plane of silver zone plates, there were more evanescent waves and the propagating waves occurred at higher spatial frequencies relative to glass zone plates. The propagating and evanescent wave components vary with the material and the number of zones in the zone plate structures. Our findings suggest that more evanescent waves and higher spatial frequency components of propagating waves can shape the field and obtain a smaller focus.