We report on a self-organised approach for the physical synthesis of laterally ordered metallic nanowire arrays. The formation of periodic metal nanostructures is induced by defocused ion irradiation of polycrystalline metal films supported on glass and polymer substrates, providing a viable alternative to time consuming serial nanopatterning approaches.

These results qualitatively agree with the behaviour reported for off–normal sputtering experiments on single-crystal metals where periodic ripples in the 10 nm range are observed [1,2]. At variance with the latter case, we found that the sub-micrometric grain size distribution of the primitive films can play an important role in the wavelength selection process during the early stages.[3]

Far-field optical characterisation demonstrates that the nanostructured surfaces exhibit interesting optical and plasmonic properties in the visible range (e.g. spectrally selective dichroic absorption) due to the excitation of localised plasmon oscillations of the conduction electrons confined  on the nanowires. The possibility to tailor the optical and plasmonic properties of the nanowire array in the visible range, has been demonstrated by  finely tuning the morphological parameters of the arrays [4].

[1] U. Valbusa et al., J. Phys. Condens. Matter 14, 8153 (2002)

[2] A.Molle, F.Buatier de Mongeot, A.Molinari, F.Fuerkaiti, C.Boragno and U.Valbusa

Physical Review Letters, 93, 256103 (2004)

[3]A. Toma, D. Chiappe, B. Šetina Batič, M. Godec, M. Jenko,  F. Buatier de Mongeot, submitted

[4]A. Toma, D. Chiappe, D. Massabò, C.Boragno, F. Buatier de Mongeot, submitted

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1. Single Molecule Magnets On Metallic Surfaces
2. Nanoscale patterning of  metal-dielectric overlayers: from surface ripples to nanowires