Trifolium nanocavity metasurfaces on single-crystal Au(111) for depth-tunable optical-variable reflection

Fuente: arXiv
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Autor principal: Kiyumbi, Amos Sospeter
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Kiyumbi, Amos Sospeter
author_facet Kiyumbi, Amos Sospeter
contents Symmetry-broken plasmonic nanocavities provide a simple route to engineer reflective optical response in continuous-metal metasurfaces. Here, we report an experimental study of trifolium-shaped nanocavity arrays milled into single-crystal Au(111) microplates and characterized by white-light reflection spectroscopy in the visible--near-infrared. The structured Au surfaces exhibit broad but well-defined reflection bands and pronounced low-reflectance regions that differ strongly from flat gold. We show that the optical response is highly sensitive to groove depth: increasing the cavity depth from $300$ nm to $350$ nm induces a clear redshift ($\sim 63$ nm) of the dominant long-wavelength minimum band ($λ= 700-800$ nm) and reshapes the intermediate spectral profile. In addition, the trifolium geometry shows a measurable azimuth-dependent response under sample rotation, unlike the azimuthally invariant behaviour often associated with circular groove cavities. These experimentally demonstrated properties directly support application directions in reflective structural colour, compact colour filtering, frequency-selective reflective surfaces, and optical-variable anti-counterfeiting features.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09279
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Trifolium nanocavity metasurfaces on single-crystal Au(111) for depth-tunable optical-variable reflection
Kiyumbi, Amos Sospeter
Optics
Symmetry-broken plasmonic nanocavities provide a simple route to engineer reflective optical response in continuous-metal metasurfaces. Here, we report an experimental study of trifolium-shaped nanocavity arrays milled into single-crystal Au(111) microplates and characterized by white-light reflection spectroscopy in the visible--near-infrared. The structured Au surfaces exhibit broad but well-defined reflection bands and pronounced low-reflectance regions that differ strongly from flat gold. We show that the optical response is highly sensitive to groove depth: increasing the cavity depth from $300$ nm to $350$ nm induces a clear redshift ($\sim 63$ nm) of the dominant long-wavelength minimum band ($λ= 700-800$ nm) and reshapes the intermediate spectral profile. In addition, the trifolium geometry shows a measurable azimuth-dependent response under sample rotation, unlike the azimuthally invariant behaviour often associated with circular groove cavities. These experimentally demonstrated properties directly support application directions in reflective structural colour, compact colour filtering, frequency-selective reflective surfaces, and optical-variable anti-counterfeiting features.
title Trifolium nanocavity metasurfaces on single-crystal Au(111) for depth-tunable optical-variable reflection
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09279