The fabrication of three-dimensional plasmonic chiral structures by dynamic shadowing growth

As chiral metamaterials become increasingly more technologically relevant, scalable, yet proficient nanofabrication methods will be needed for their production. Dynamic shadowing growth (DSG) that takes advantage of the vapor shadowing effect during physical vapor deposition is a simple and powerful tool to produce chiral nanostructures. In this report we describe several new DSG strategies for the scalable production of chiral plasmonic thin films with significant optical activity in the visible and near-infrared wavelength region. Specifically, we demonstrate that by use of metal composite (Ti/Ag) and metal/dielectric composite materials (Ag/MgF₂), nanoscale helices can be fabricated using DSG at room temperature. Additionally, we show how self-assembled colloidal monolayers of nanospheres can serve as effective templates for the production of a wide variety of highly chiral films. These films can be used to construct chiral metamaterial-based devices for future applications.