Review of the Functions of Archimedes’ Spiral Metallic Nanostructures

Abstract

Here, we have reviewed some typical plasmonic structures based on Archimedes’ spiral (AS) architectures, which can produce polarization-sensitive focusing phenomenon and generate plasmonic vortices (PVs) carrying controllable orbital angular momentum (OAM) because of the relation between the incident polarized states and the chiralities of the spiral structures. These features can be used to analyze different circular polarization states, which has been one of the rapidly developing researching topics in nanophotonics in recent years. Many investigations demonstrate that the multifunctional spiral-based plasmonic structures are excellent choices for chiral selection and generating the transmitted field with well-defined OAM. The circular polarization extinction ratio, as an evaluation criterion for the polarization selectivity of a designed structure, could be effectively improved by properly modulating the parameters of spiral structures. Such functional spiral plasmonic nanostructures are promising for applications in analyzing circular polarization light, full Stokes vector polarimetric sensors, near-field imaging, and so on.

Interaction of an Archimedean spiral structure with orbital angular momentum light

“…The mechanism for the optical fields is slightly different to the vortex formation of SPP on metallic surfaces. For the SPPs the grooves in the surface act as a source of SPPs and the vortex formation can be described by an interference pattern of waves running inside the spiral with the correct phase [2,3,5,7]. A similar equation for the vortex number has also been found [2,4,6,11,24,46].…”

“…For the grooved spiral in a metal system, it was found that a vortex of SPPs is generated, when the distance d between the parts of the segmented spiral agrees with the wavelength of the propagating SPP [2,7,8].…”

“…Recently it was shown that by grooving Archimedean spiral structures in a gold nano platelet, the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) field forms a vortex in the centre of the structure [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The femtosecond dynamics of the formation of the plasmonic vortex can be studied using time-resolved two-photon photoemission electron microscopy [8].…”

Compound plasmonic vortex generation based on spiral nanoslits

“…Till now, several methods have been advanced to generate plasmonic vortex and they include single spiral nanoslit [9][10][11][12][13], spiral nanoslit with multiple arms [14][15][16][17], and distributed nanoholes [18][19][20]. Spiral slit has the advantages of simple structure, convenient manufacture and easy operation, and it is often used to generate low order optical vortex [21,22]. Spiral nanoslit with multiple arms is often used to generate high order optical vortex, where the small gap between the start to the end of each spiral can mitigate the influence of the SPP decay.…”

Helicene-SPP-Based Chiral Plasmonic Hybrid Structure: Toward Direct Enantiomers SERS Discrimination

“…Several strategies have been applied to create optical active plasmonic nanostructures, including the direct synthesis or postsynthetic modification of metal nanoparticles, chiral assembly, or a range of various deposition techniques. − Most of these approaches are restricted by using demanding experimental procedures, insufficient chirality, or a small area of resulted structures. Therefore, numerous approaches to prepare chiral plasmonic nanostructures reproducibly and in large-scale production have appeared recently. − One of the promising methods utilizes the combination of intrinsically nonchiral plasmonic nanostructures with the chiral dielectric medium − assuming the transfer of chiral response from the surrounding medium to plasmonic nanostructures. − In this respect, a number of chiral biomolecules, including peptides, DNA, or aminoacids, − were used as such chiral media.…”