Excitation of a surface plasmon with an elastomeric grating

We report on a new method to excite surface plasmon polaritons on a thin metal slab surface using an elastomeric grating which is fabricated by replica molding technique. The grating is placed on the metal surface which creates a periodic perturbation on the surface matching the momentum of the incident light to that of the surface plasmon. The conformal contact between the metal surface and the elastomeric grating changes the dielectric medium periodically and allows the observation of an effective surface plasmon polariton at the metal-air and metal-polymer interfaces of the grating. To clarify the nature of the observed plasmon, comparison of the elastomeric grating with elastomeric slabs was performed with the attenuated total reflection method. © 2006 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2222344