Die imprinting of MGs: A one-step approach for large-area metallic photonic crystals

The discovery of photonic crystals (PCs) enables the manipulation of photons and opens an avenue to design nanostructured materials for a variety of optical devices. Due to the existence of surface plasmon polariton, metallic PCs exhibit higher efficiency and better power durability. Despite this, the costly and inefficient fabricating methods severely limit their applications. In the present work, large-area metallic glass (MG) PCs consisting of uniform rods with diameter of similar to 350 nm and height of similar to 100 nm have been prepared through the die imprinting of Pd40.5NL40.5Si4.5P14.5 MGs with Si templates. The prepared MG PC exhibits a periodicity of 1.580 +/- 0.002 mu m, and possesses very low linear shrinkage of 11 nm as well as a relative linear shrinkage rate of 0.691%, which is much lower than those of the crystalline PCs under similar fabrication conditions. Uniform structural colors were observed on the surface of the MG PC under illuminating by fluorescent lamp light. Besides, polymeric PCs were successfully prepared by hot embossing from the MG PC. The die imprinting of MGs offers an inexpensive, effective and one-step approach for producing large-area and high-quality metallic PCs and may shed new insights on both scientific fundamentals and technological innovations in the PC area. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.