On-chip printing of plasmonic micropatterns of silver nanoparticles via precision photoreduction

In this paper, we present a precision photoreduction technology to directly print multiscale engineered plasmonic micropatterns of silver nanoparticles on a titanium dioxide-capped substrate. With an in-house digital ultraviolet (UV) lithography technology, dynamically generated UV patterns are used to temporally and spatially regulate the photoreduction of silver nanoparticles to create on-chip plasmonic micropatterns. The dimension of silver nanoparticles is precisely controlled through fast and precise switch on/off of UV irradiation. The technology enables one-step production of large-area multiscale engineered plasmonic substrates and thus is promising for a great many applications ranging from plasmonic biosensors to structural color generation.