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Self-assembly of nanostructured glass metasurfaces via templated fluid instabilities

Nature Nanotechnology volume 14, pages 320–327 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 18 February 2019

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Abstract

Modern devices require the tuning of the size, shape and spatial arrangement of nano-objects and their assemblies with nanometre-scale precision, over large-area and sometimes soft substrates. Such stringent requirements are beyond the reach of conventional lithographic techniques or self-assembly approaches. Here, we show nanoscale control over the fluid instabilities of optical thin glass films for the fabrication of self-assembled all-dielectric optical metasurfaces. We show and model the tailoring of the position, shape and size of nano-objects with feature sizes below 100 nm and with interparticle distances down to 10 nm. This approach can generate optical nanostructures over rigid and soft substrates that are more than tens of centimetres in size, with optical performance and resolution on a par with advanced traditional lithography-based processes. To underline the potential of our approach, which reconciles high-performance optical metasurfaces and simple self-assembly fabrication approaches, we demonstrate experimentally and via numerical simulation sharp Fano resonances with a quality factor, Q, as high as ∼300 in the visible for all-dielectric nanostructures, to realize protein monolayer detection.

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Fig. 1: Fabrication process for optical metasurfaces.
Fig. 2: Study of the dewetting process.
Fig. 3: Process versatility.
Fig. 4: Process versatility.
Fig. 5: Optical properties of chalcogenide metasurfaces.
Fig. 6: Biosensing application.

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Change history

  • 18 February 2019

    In the version of this Article originally published, the volume, article number and year of ref. 32 were incorrect; they should have read 31, 1802348 (2019). This has now been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank F. Smektala and F. Dévésédavy for providing the chalcogenide compositions used in this work. The authors also acknowledge the European Research Council for funding support (ERC starting grant 679211 ‘FLOWTONICS’).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices Laboratory, Institute of Materials, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Tapajyoti Das Gupta, Louis Martin-Monier, Wei Yan, Arthur Le Bris, Tùng Nguyen-Dang, Alexis Gérald Page, Kuan-Ting Ho, Yunpeng Qu & Fabien Sorin

  2. BioNanoPhotonic Systems Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Filiz Yesilköy & Hatice Altug

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  1. Tapajyoti Das Gupta
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Contributions

F.S. proposed the research direction, supervised the project, and participated in the materials selection and modelling of the dewetting process as well as the optical properties of the nanostructures. T.D.G. participated in fabrication, optical experiments, and their corresponding simulations and modelling. L.M.-M. participated in the modelling of the dewetting process. A.L.B. initiated the project and conducted initial experiments on sample fabrication and optical property measurements. T.D.G., L.M.-M., W.Y., T.N.-D. and A.G.P. participated in SEM characterization. W.Y. carried out the corresponding TEM characterization. A.G.P. characterized experimentally the variation of characteristic dewetting time constant with normalized viscosity. T.D.G., F.Y. and H.A. participated in the protein monolayer experiment and bulk index sensing. K.-T.H. produced a master semester project on biosensing. T.D.G., T.N. and Y.Q. performed the stretchable optomechanical experiment. T.D.G., L.M.-M. and F.S. wrote the manuscript. All authors gave final consent to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fabien Sorin.

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Supplementary Figures 1–14; Supplementary Sections 1–16.

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Das Gupta, T., Martin-Monier, L., Yan, W. et al. Self-assembly of nanostructured glass metasurfaces via templated fluid instabilities. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 320–327 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0362-9

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