IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 8, APRIL 15, 2015 813
Plasmonic Hologram Based on
Metallic Nanowire Gratings
Xin Sheng, Jie Cui, Jun Zheng, and Zhi-Cheng Ye
Abstract—In this letter, we present a colorful plasmonic
hologram which is polarization sensitive—the diffraction
efficiency of transverse magnetic light is more enhanced than
that of the transverse electric light. The character is caused by
longitudinal plasmonic waveguiding effects in the periodic metal-
insulator-metal waveguides. These patterns in the hologram even
lead to the merits of wide incident angle and working bands. This
letter affords a new approach to fabricate highly efficient and
polarization-dependent hologram, which is potentially applicable
to stronger anticounterfeiting and compatible with liquid crystal
for dynamic 3-D displays.
Index Terms—Holography, optical polarization, surface
plasmon, waveguide modes.
I. INTRODUCTION
H
OLOGRAPHY, recording both amplitude and phase of
light fields, has been applied to many fields such as
holographic interferometry and anti-counterfeiting [1], [2].
In particular, holographic imaging enjoys great popularity in
three-dimensional (3D) displays [3]. Unlike stereoscopy which
always leads to visual discomfort and fatigue [4], holography
is capable of providing real 3D images without glasses.
In spite of those advantages, low diffraction efficiency
and limited viewing angle are still hindering the practical
application of holography, especially in relief hologram which
dominates the commercial market of anti-counterfeiting and
decoration.
Manuscript received November 18, 2014; revised December 25, 2014;
accepted January 6, 2015. Date of publication January 12, 2015; date of
current version March 19, 2015. This work was supported in part by the Ph.D.
Programs Foundation through the Ministry of Education, China, under Grant
20100073120034, in part by the Major State Basic Research Development
Program (973 Program) of China under Grant 2013CB328804, in part by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 11374212,
Grant 61370047, Grant 61007025, and Grant 51235007, and in part by the Key
Laboratory of High Energy Laser Science and Technology, China Academy
of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, China, under Grant 2012HCF03.
X. Sheng and J. Cui are with the National Engineering Laboratory
for TFT-LCD Materials and Technology, Department of Electronic Engi-
neering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail:
rai@sjtu.edu.cn; cuijie@sjtu.edu.cn).
J. Zheng is with Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (Ministry of Educa-
tion), Department of Physics and Astronomy, IFSA Collaborative Innovation
Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail:
jzheng@sjtu.edu.cn).
Z.-C. Ye is with National Engineering Laboratory for TFT-LCD Materials
and Technology, Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai 200240, China, and also with the State Key Laboratory
on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China (e-mail: yzhch@sjtu.edu.cn).
This paper has supplementary downloadable material at
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org, provided by the authors. The file consists of
Media 1. The material is 1.03 MB in size.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2015.2390776
Fig. 1. Fabrication of Plasmonic Hologram: (a) Optical setup for recording
a dielectric hologram. The object to be recorded is set close to the recording
plate to alleviate phase difference blur. RP: recording plate; SF: Spatial Filter;
FL: Focus Lens. (b) Aluminum film of thickness ∼40 nm is deposited onto
the hologram.
Recently, the combination of holography and surface
plasmon [5]–[7] opens a new way to increase the
diffraction efficiency of hologram and realize colored display.
However, the resonance character makes the devices sensitive
to incident angle and wavelength, which makes it hard to
record and reconstruct the hologram [8]. To solve these
problems, we fabricate surface relief hologram at a sub-
wavelength scale by laser interference lithography. Then we
coat the hologram with aluminum to form a periodic metal-
insulator-metal (MIM) structure. Multi-color holographic
images under white light illumination are obtained in broad
viewing angles and wavelengths. Moreover, the new metal
hologram, plasmonic hologram (PHG), exhibits enhancement
of diffraction efficiency and polarization sensitivity without the
need of dichroic or birefringent recording materials [9], [10].
We reveal that the longitudinal surface plasmon modes in the
metal-insulator-metal waveguides (MIMWs) lead to the unique
performances.
II. E
XPERIMENTAL WORK
A. Recording
Figure 1(a) illustrates the setup of hologram recording.
A blue laser beam with wavelength of 457.8 nm (CVI-MG)
is expanded and split into two collimated parts: one directly
reaches the recording plate as the reference light with incident
angle of ∼40°; the other is reflected onto the photoresist by
the object (a key) which is next to the recording plate. The
two laser beams interfere with each other and the interference
fringes are recorded on the photoresist. The average power
intensity of light source is ∼3.8 mW/cm
2
and exposure time is
∼3 minutes. The exposed photoresist is developed with NaOH
(0.7%) for 15-20 seconds. Then, the recording plate is rinsed
with deioned water and heated by hot wind for 30 seconds.
Finally, the photoresist dielectric hologram is obtained.
Subsequently, in Fig. 1(b), a ∼40-nm-thick aluminum
film is deposited onto the hologram using E-beam coater
(ZSX-500D), thus a PHG is obtained. Please note that
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