Large-scale fabrication of flexible metallic nanostructure pairs using interference ablation.

Paired one- and two-dimensional metallic nanostructures are created directly by exposing a thin gold film to the interference pattern between ultraviolet laser pulses, where the gold film is coated onto a soft substrate and is sandwiched by another soft slab. Metallic films in the bright fringes are melted and transformed into nanodroplets that are ejected onto the soft slab forming stretchable nanoisland structures. The pattern of the remaining films is coincident with the dark fringes. Thus, complementary metallic nanostructure pairs were fabricated using a single laser pulse. Fano resonance can be observed in the spectroscopic response of the fabricated nanostructures for TM and TE polarizations simultaneously. This nanofabrication technique may provide an annealing-free approach for the fabrication of flexible metallic nanostructures on a large scale and with low cost.