Transmission enhancement in coupled nanohole and nanodisk arrays for solar blind UV filter

Abstract Extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) based on metallic nanohole array has great potential for optical filtering, owing to its spectral selectivity and structure-dependent tunability. However the transmittance of EOT is relatively low owing to the large loss of the metal film, particularly in the UV waveband. Herein, we propose a high transmission narrowband ultraviolet filter based on aluminum compound nanostructures on a UV-grade fused silica substrate. These compound nanostructures are consisted of periodic nanodisk and nanohole arrays with the same period in a staggered rectangular arrangement. Numerical simulations using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method have shown that the compound structures exhibit high transmittance of over 70% and a narrower bandwidth of less than 50 nm in the 200–300 nm spectral region compared with the conventionally EOT of pure metallic nanohole arrays. Moreover, a broad suppression in the wavelength ranges of 300 to 1100 nm was achieved. The enhanced performance is attributed to the coupling between the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) of nanohole arrays and the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of nanodisk arrays. The compound coupled nanostructures can be used in solar-blind ultraviolet detectors and the enhancement mechanism has potential for use in other spectral regions.