Periodic Nanohole Arrays with Enhanced Lasing and Spontaneous Emissions for Low-Cost Plasmonic Devices

Periodic arrays of air nanoholes in thin metal films that support surface plasmon resonances can provide an alternative approach for boosting the light–matter interactions at the nanoscale. Nanohole arrays have garnered great interest in recent years for their use in biosensing, light emission enhancement, and spectroscopy. Here, we employ a simple technique to fabricate nanohole arrays and examine their photonic applications including enhanced lasing and spontaneous emission of novel nanomaterials. In contrast to the complicated and most commonly used electron-beam lithography technique, hexagonal arrays of nanoholes are fabricated by using a simple combination of shadowing nanosphere lithography technique and electron-beam deposition. Through spectral and temporal characterizations, it was shown that these arrays offer an enhancement in the lasing emission of an organic dye liquid gain medium with a quality factor above 150 as well as an accelerated decay rate for CdSe quantum dots. The simple fabrication of nanohole arrays together with their excellent optical responses can therefore offer a great potential in the industrialization of plasmonic devices for use in various realms of emerging technologies such as gas sensing, biomedical imaging, and ultrafast on-chip coherent light sources.