The effect of the substrate on the damage threshold of gold nano-antennas by a femtosecond laser

Abstract Gold nano-antennas with silica substrate may not be suitable for high power applications such as heat resisted magnetic recording, solar thermophotovoltaics, and nano-scale heat transfer systems. When a laser beam reaches to these nano-antennas, part of the light is absorbed by the metallic regions, leading to a temperature rise of the device. If these devices reach a temperature beyond its Tamman temperature (the temperature at which sintering of atoms or molecules start to occur), the antenna can be damaged. One strategy to allow the antenna to work at higher fluences (energy density) is to employ substrates that can quickly carry the heat away from the antennas. In this paper, we show that high thermal conductivity substrates, such as diamond, can allow the antenna to withstand 20 times higher fluence than a low thermal conductivity silica substrate.