Surface plasmon - Polariton assisted metal-dielectric multilayers as passband filters for ultraviolet range

Abstract

We designed and fabricated metal-dielectric multilayers intended for passband filters in the ultraviolet range. We determined the dispersion characteristics by the Bloch approach to evanescent wave resonant coupling and calculated the spectral characteristics using the transfer matrix method while taking into account real dispersion and absorptive losses. We considered the influence of nanoscale interface roughness as a means to couple evanescent electromagnetic field to the propagating far field modes. In our structures both propagating and evanescent modes contribute to the overall performance, resulting in an enhanced transmission in the desired range, while retaining a strong suppression of undesired frequencies of more than four orders of magnitude. In our experiments we used radiofrequent sputtering of silver and silica and characterized our multilayers by UV-vis spectroscopy.