In this thesis I report the design and fabrication of well aligned repeatable multilayered gold and silver chiral metamaterials of high uniformity in the 100nm scale which show significant circular dichroism in the visible range. Two layered Dolmen structure, two layered 'LI' structure, three layered 3-4-5 right-angled-triangle structure and three layered 'V' structure are successfully fabricated, allowing possible applications in wave-plates and circular polarizers. These samples are produced by an e-beam direct write technique with a precise multi-layer alignment control and a lift-off process. The experimental results are well matched with simulations using a finite-integration technique from CST microwave studio.

None of the structures show circular dichroism upon first layer fabri...[ Read more ]

In this thesis I report the design and fabrication of well aligned repeatable multilayered gold and silver chiral metamaterials of high uniformity in the 100nm scale which show significant circular dichroism in the visible range. Two layered Dolmen structure, two layered 'LI' structure, three layered 3-4-5 right-angled-triangle structure and three layered 'V' structure are successfully fabricated, allowing possible applications in wave-plates and circular polarizers. These samples are produced by an e-beam direct write technique with a precise multi-layer alignment control and a lift-off process. The experimental results are well matched with simulations using a finite-integration technique from CST microwave studio.

None of the structures show circular dichroism upon first layer fabrication due to the achiral property of single layer, except for the single layer 3-4-5 right-angled-triangle structure which processes 2-D chirality. All the multilayered structures exhibit circular dichroism showing qualitatively the same shape upon opposite incident direction because of the handedness of structures; and with deviations due to the presence of the substrate and buffer layers. For the 'V' structure, within the first three layers the CD increases with number of layers, unveiling the importance between 3-D chirality and optical activity. The mastering of alignment technique is important for successful fabrication of multilayered optical metamaterials. This project achieves precise multi-layer alignment control which is difficult and challenging.