Investigation of plasmon resonance tunneling through subwavelength hole arrays in highly doped conductive ZnO films

Experimental results pertaining to plasmon resonance tunneling through a highly conductive zinc oxide (ZnO) layer with subwavelength hole-arrays is investigated in the mid-infrared regime. Gallium-doped ZnO layers are pulsed-laser deposited on a silicon wafer. The ZnO has metallic optical properties with a bulk plasma frequency of 214 THz, which is equivalent to a free space wavelength of 1.4 μm. Hole arrays with different periods and hole shapes are fabricated via a standard photolithography process. Resonant mode tunneling characteristics are experimentally studied for different incident angles and compared with surface plasmon theoretical calculations and finite-difference time-domain simulations. Transmission peaks, higher than the baseline predicted by diffraction theory, are observed in each of the samples at wavelengths that correspond to the excitation of surface plasmon modes.