Scalable and Tunable Periodic Graphene Nanohole Arrays for Mid-Infrared Plasmonics

Despite its great potential for a wide variety of devices, especially mid-infrared biosensors and photodetectors, graphene plasmonics is still confined to academic research. A major reason is the fact that, so far, expensive and low-throughput lithography techniques are needed to fabricate graphene nanostructures.

Here, we report for the first time a detailed experimental study on electrostatically tunable graphene nanohole array surfaces with periods down to 100 nm, showing clear plasmonic response in the range similar to 1300-1600 cm-1, which can be fabricated by a scalable nanoimprint technique. Such large area plasmonic nanostructures are suitable for industrial applications, for example, surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) sensing, as they combine easy design, extreme field confinement, and the possibility to excite multiple plasmon modes enabling multiband sensing, a feature not readily available in nanoribbons or other localized resonant structures.