Fluid-enabled significant enhancement and active tuning of magnetic resonances in free-standing plasmonic metamaterials

We report significantly enhanced magnetic resonance by fluid infiltration in a free-standing metamaterial that consists of metal-dielectric-metal films on an ultrathin Si3N4 membrane patterned with etched through nanohole arrays. When different fluids are drop-casted on the structure, the magnetic resonance has high sensitivities of 282 nm per RIU in peak shift and 12% per RIU in peak intensity change, whereas the electric resonance has nearly no changes. This work shows a promising way of using fluids to actively tune the magnetic resonance of metamaterial structures by combining with micro/nano-fluidic technologies.