Numerical investigation of plasmonic bowtie nanorings with embedded nanoantennas for achieving high SEIRA enhancement factors

Abstract This paper presents the numerical investigation of several complex plasmonic nanostructures — bowtie nanoring and crossed-bowtie nanoring nanoantennas with embedded bowtie nanoantennas and crossed-bowtie nanoantennas — for surface enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) spectroscopy-based substrates. The proposed nanostructures exhibit substantially large SEIRA enhancement factor (∼8.1 × 10 5 ) compared to previously reported enhancement factor values for bowtie nanoantennas or nanoring antennas. The plasmonic properties of the proposed nanostructures have been studied by the numerical evaluation of the near-field electromagnetic enhancement at resonant plasmon mode excitation wavelengths in the mid-IR spectral regime. The highest SEIRA enhancement of ∼8.1 × 10 5 occurs at a wavelength of ∼6800 nm (6.8 μ m). A substantial electric field enhancement as large as ∼375, corresponding to SEIRA EF of ∼1.4 × 10 5 is noted even when the minimum gaps between the plasmonic nanostructures is as large as 10 nm, which can easily be fabricated using the conventional nanolithography techniques. The occurrence of several electric field hotspots due to the presence of plasmonic nanoantennas embedded inside the nanorings was observed, as the electric fields are enhanced in the vicinity of the plasmonic nanostructures being proposed. The multiple electric field hotspots in the proposed nanostructures can lead to larger average electric field enhancement as well as the average SEIRA enhancement for these substrates. Moreover, by embedding plasmonic nanoantenna structures inside the bowtie nanorings and crossed-bowtie nanorings, large spectral tunability of plasmon resonance wavelengths is achieved in the spectral regime from 4 μ m to 8 μ m. This is done by varying a larger number of spectral parameters that are present in these complex nanostructures. This paper also reports a novel configuration of crossed-bowtie nanoring plasmonic structure exhibiting less polarization dependence of the SEIRA enhancement factor. This structure also exhibits tunability of hotspot positions when the direction of the polarization of the incident light is rotated. The proposed structures in this paper can be fabricated by the state-of-the-art nanofabrication technologies. The proposed structures could find potential applications in chemical and biological sensing and biochemical detection of analyte molecules.