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Diatoms are microscopic algae found in all of Earths water courses. Theyproduce frustules, porous silica exoskeletons, grown by precipitation ofsilicic acid from water. Frustule components, known as girdles, from somediatom species also feature highly periodic pore arrays with properties on thesame scale and quality of ordering as manufactured photonic crystals. Here, thegirdles of two diatom species with various lattice constants are used asbio-silica scaffolds for plasmonic crystals, combined with metals chosen forspectral agreement between permittivity and photonic crystal properties. Theuse of frustules as scaffolds for plasmonic application has been testedearlier, as nano-porous features can enhance scattering and local hotspots,useful for sensing application or SERS. However, both the use of girdles and ofcontinuous metal films are new approaches offering previously unseen plasmoniceffects. Angularly resolved dispersions from reflection Fourier spectroscopyare provided for Coscinodiscus granii girdles, forming well-ordered squarelattices, and Coscinodiscus wailesii, forming ordered hexagonal lattices,covered with a 40 nm film of silver or with 40 nm of gold, respectively. Thesewere confirmed with optical modelling of the 3D systems, including both metalsurface layers and internal frustule structures, allowing for the calculationof dispersions and electric fields. Measurements are further compared withstructures produced via Focused Ion Beam microscopy, demonstrating theadvantages of girdles as photonic crystal scaffolds and as an alternative toconventional plasmonic crystal fabrication. The results demonstrate thathigh-quality plasmonic crystal scaffolds from diatoms are available in nature,and their natural diversity can be applied in a controlled way to obtainplasmonic crystals with a wide range of behaviours and spectral responses.

Plasmonic crystals with highly ordered lattice geometries using  continuous metal films on diatom bio-silica as both scaffolds and sources of  tuneability