Fabrication of plasmonic waveguides by nanoimprint and UV-lithography

We present a nanoimprint lithography based method for the fabrication of plasmonic waveguides in the form of V-grooves in a metal surface which support propagation of channel plasmon polaritons (CPPs). The developed method is compatible with large scale production, easily adaptable to different device designs and offers wafer-scale parallel fabrication of plasmonic components. The metal quality is improved in terms of surface roughness when compared to previous demonstrations where grooves were made by direct milling of metal, and the design allows easy fiber access at both ends of the waveguide. We demonstrate the design, fabrication and scanning near-field optical characterization of channel plasmon polariton waveguides at telecom wavelengths. Optical characterization of the fabricated waveguides shows low-loss (propagation length ~ 120 μm) CPP guiding.