Manipulation of multidimensional plasmonic spectra for information storage

We demonstrate a concept of optical data storage through plasmonic resonances of metallic nanostructures. Metallic nanostructures exhibit strong variations in their reflectance and/or transmittance spectra due to surface plasmon polariton resonances. We study the variations in spectra through 50×50 arrays of repeated unit cells covering a total area of ?50×50 ? m2. Each cell contains ten different nanofeatures, such as an ellipse, a ring, a circle, a triangle, a square, etc. The size of each unit-cell is 500×500 nm2, and the periodicity is 1.0 ?m. The variations in spectra are obvious enough to be distinguished and then retrieved. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.