Plasmonic Titanium Nitride Nanostructures via Nitridation of Nanopatterned Titanium Dioxide

Plasmonic titanium nitride nanostructures are obtained via nitridation of titanium dioxide. Nanoparticles acquired a cubic shape with sharper edges following the rock-salt crystalline structure of TiN. Lattice constant of the resulting TiN nanoparticles matched well with the tabulated data. Energy-filtered TEM images and XPS results showed that oxygen was replaced by nitrogen. In contrast to nanoscale processing challenges of refractory TiN, well-understood material synthesis of TiO2 provides an attractive route to large-scale fabrication of refractory plasmonic materials with complex designs at the nano- and microscales.