Optical Antennas for Far and Near Field Metrology

F. Silvestri1,2 , F. Bernal Arango1 , K.J.A. Vendel1,3 , G. Gerini1,2 , S.M.B. Baumer1 , A.F. Koenderink4
1 Optics Department, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast- Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek, TNO,
2628 CK Stieltjesweg 1, Delft, The Netherlands
2 Electromagnetics Group, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, TU/e,

5600 MB Den Dolech, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

3 Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium, Universiteit Leiden,

2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands

4 Center for Nanophotonics, FOM Institute AMOLF,

Science Park 102/104, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands

AbstractThis paper presents the use of optical antennas
in metrology scenarios. Two design concepts are presented:
dielectric nanoresonator arrays and plasmonic nanoantennas
arrays. The first ones are able to focus an incident light beam
at an arbitrary focal plane. The nanoantennas arrays can
be employed for collecting the high-spatial frequencies of any
scattering environment and redirecting into far-field information.
The first concept can be employed in the manufacturing of cus-
tom holographic surfaces for free-form optics characterization.
The second concept is attractive for the development of high-
resolution, high-efficiency optical metrology instruments.
Index Termsoptical antennas, dielectric resonators, holo-
grams, plasmonics, high-resolution.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The concept of Optical Antennas is commonly referred
to the use of arrays of nano scatterers, characterized by
dielectric or plasmonic behaviors, to manipulate an incident
wavefront. The typical size of these scatterers is in the order
of half-wavelength. It has been demonstrated that this order
of magnitude is small enough to guarantee a refined control
of the scattered light in an almost point-like fashion along
the surface of the array. The interested reader is referred to
[1] for a review of the different possibilities of employing
optical antennas in order to realize optical metasurfaces. The
possibility of locally modifying the scattered field from any
surface enables the design of flat optics able to deflect the
incoming wavefront without recurring to refractive effects.
By just exploiting interference effects, as in a conventional
active planar phased array at microwave frequencies, the
same deflecting effect can be achieved. As another possible
application of optical antennas, we discuss in this paper the
use of nanoantennas in high-resolution imaging systems. In
the last years, the theme of optical high-resolution sensors
has received particular attention. Different solutions have been
proposed to design such sensors: for example near field
scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) and negative refrac-
tive index or hyperbolic metamaterials. In this contribution
we propose the use of arrays of plasmonic nanoantennas
which can overcome the limitations of the aforementioned
techniques. Nanoantennas, placed close enough to the object
of interest, couple with the radiation scattered by the object.
By mode-converting the high spatial frequency content into
the far-field radiation, these devices enable the propagation
of high-resolution details up to considerably far distances
where the detector is placed. Differently from conventional
NSOM techniques, where apertures on metallic tips or optical
fibers are used, the array of plasmonic nanoantennas facilitates
the parallalelization of the scan, by just replicating the same
structure over a larger area. In terms of efficiency, exploiting
the polarization characteristics and the reduced dimensions
of the scatterers, arrays of nanoantennas, in principle, are
characterized by better performances compared to negative
refractive index or hyperbolic metamaterials that are usually
realized with extended stacks of lossy plasmonic materials. In
the following sections, more insights into the two different
technologies, here proposed, are provided. A wavelength-
thick flat lens, realized employing dielectric nanoresonators,
is presented in Section II, including the design characteristics
and the measured performances. The operation principles, the
scheme for retrieving the optical information and numerical
results of an optical sensor consisting of an array of plasmonic
nanoantennas are presented and discussed in Section III.
II. D IELECTRIC NANORESONATORS
Dielectric nanoresonator antennas have recently received a
large interest. Different works have been presented regarding
their electromagnetic characterization [3], [4], [5], and their
use in order to realize focusing or light-steering flat surfaces in
a reflectarray configuration [6] or a transmitarray configuration
[7]. Dielectric nanoresonator surfaces exhibit several benefits:
firstly, the nanoresonator array can be realized using materials
commonly used in nanomanufacturing processes (e.g. fused
silica, silicon, silicon carbide) with just one lithographic step;
secondly, by exploiting the particular combination of magnetic
and electric resonances, dielectric nanoresonators array can
be employed to realize high transmittance/reflectance surfaces
with a local control of the transmitted/reflected wavefront (in
the order of half wavelength spacings). They represent the
optical dielectric counterpart of metallic transmit/reflectarray
usually employed in microwave systems [8]. For these char-
acteristics, dielectric nanoresonator surfaces can replace the
Fig. 1. Artistic impression of the unit cell used for realizing the 2 m
focal length. The dimensions are the following: hemb = 665 nm, hinf =
300 nm, a = 377 nm, hc = 96 nm and the different radii have been chosen
within a range rad [35; 135] nm. On the right the transmission coefficients,
magnitude and phase, for different values of radius are shown.
conventional diffractive optical elements DOEs (e.g. diffrac-
tion gratings, Fresnel lenses) in the optical testshop of the
next years. DOEs are used whenever a particular light dis-
tribution is needed, both in terms of amplitude and phase
wavefront, or whenever a particular reduced form-factor is
needed. One of their main applications in optical metrology is
the development of computer generated holograms, CGH, for
free-form optics measurements [9]. The current limitation of
the DOEs is represented by the sampling period that is usually
an integer number of wavelengths. Dielectric nanoresonators
surfaces, in principle, can overcome this limitation having
a smaller lattice period that guarantees a better sampling
of high slope wavefronts. As a proof of the possibilities of
employing dielectric nanoresonators arrays in optical systems,
here we present a flat lens with a focal length of 2 m,
operating at 635nm wavelength, realized with a wavelength-
thick free-standing membrane embedding an array of dielectric
nanoresonators. The modeling technique and the design flow
has already been presented in a recent paper [10] and here a
brief resume is presented for the sake of clarity. The lens has
been realized with silicon (Si) resonators embedded in a fused
silica (SiO2 ) transparent layer. The characteristics refractive
index of the two materials at the wavelength of operation are:
nSi = 3.87j0.00085 and nSiO2 = 1.50. The silicon has been
chosen for being a high contrast material but with reduced
losses in the wavelength of interest. An infinite periodic array
of equal dielectric nanoresonators has been studied with the
commercial electromagnetic solver HFSS. The transmission
properties of the infinite array have been computed for differ-
ent values of the radius of the resonators. The other dimensions
have been optimized in order to get high values of transmission
and reduced sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances [10]. The
transmission coefficients, magnitude and phase, for the dif-
ferent radii are reported in figure 1, together with an artistic
Fig. 2. SEM image of the silicon nanoresonators before the deposition of
the top fused silica layer (top) and the measured light intensity profile at the
focal plane, normalized to their peak value.
impression of the array unit cell. The lens has been designed
using 17 17 nanoresonators in order to get a focal spot at
2 m from the surface lens. The lens has been manufactured
by reactive ion etching the silicon resonators on a silicon
on insulator (SOI) wafer, with the help of electron beam
lithographic (EBL) masks; a top layer of fused silica has been
deposited with plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition
(PECVD), in order to embed all the resonators in a low
contrast matrix of fused silica. A final step of etching has
been performed to realize a 1 mm 1 mm standing membrane
of 665 nm thickness. The structure has been measured and
in figure 2 the light intensity profile along two orthogonal
directions at the focal plane are reported together with a
scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the realized
structure. The results show clearly the focusing properties of
the manufactured lens. Further experimental results will be
presented at the conference. It is worth mentioning that the
concept of dielectric nanoresonators in the optical regime can
also be used for realizing surfaces able to manipulate the
polarization characteristics of incoming light [11], [12].
III. P LASMONIC NANOANTENNAS
Plasmonic nanoantennas are an attractive concept to attain
high-efficiency and high-resolution optical sensors [13]. If the
nanoantennas are placed at a close distance from the object to

Fig. 3. Optical confocal system where an array of plasmonic nanoantennas
is used to probe the near-field radiated by the object and to rescatter back in
the far-field.
be imaged, in a zone where the near-field, evanescent compo-
nents of the radiation are still strong enough, they can probe
these evanescent components and couple their informational
contribution into far-field radiative components [14]. In this
way, even the finer details of the imaged object are accessible
at the detector location. The resolution, that one can get, is
related to the distance between the array of nanoantennas and
the object and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the whole
system, as it is in the well established aperture-near-field
imaging [15]. Compared to other super-resolution surfaces,
such as hyperbolic metamaterials [16], this solution has a
higher efficiency. Plasmonic nanoantennas are characterized
by an intrinsic lossy behavior. However, in order to reduce
the losses, the polarization characteristics of the antennas can
be employed. Consider, for example, a confocal system as
shown in figure 3: an array of nanoantennas, perpendicularly
aligned with respect to the direction and polarization of the
incident beam, is almost transparent to the beam itself. In this
way the losses of the metallic antennas are almost negligible
in the illumination path. However, in close proximity to the
object, its scattered field contains both copolar and crosspolar
components with respect to the preferred polarization of the
nanoantennas. This means that the nanoantennas are excited
only by a part of the field, scattered by the object, and they
re-radiate towards the detection modules of the system. In
order to prove the imaging capabilities of these structures,
a theoretical simulation model of the system has been de-
veloped. The plasmonic nanoantennas are modelled according
to the point-dipole theory. The point dipole calculation, as
explained in [15], [17], is performed on antennas described by
electrically polarizable prolate objects [18]. Also the objects
are modelled as ideal dipoles excited by an incident plane
wave (illumination beam). The array of nanoantennas consists
of 9 9 gold dipoles in vacuum placed at 20 nm from the
object. The inter-element distance is 150 nm in both transverse
directions. No substrate has been considered at this initial step,
but its effect can be included by means of the Greens function
of a dielectric slab. This substrate, together with any substrate
present in the imaged object, will modify the local density
Fig. 4. Fourier image at the detector of the microscope with an indication of
the four quadrants used in the post-processing algorithm (left); retrieved image
of three particles 50 nm and 60 nm apart at = 800 nm (right). The retrieved
image has been obtained for each scanning point by subtracting portion 4 of
the Fourier image from portion 1 and integrating along the y direction.
of states (LDOS) and the radiation pattern of both antennas
and object [15]. The wavelength of operation considered is
= 800 nm. Several configurations of objects have been
scanned with steps of 5 nm over an area of 200 nm 200 nm.
The aforementioned model has been coupled with a model
of a conventional confocal microscope, in order to get the
image of the whole optical system at the Fourier plane. At
this point, a reconstruction algorithm needs to be used in order
to retrieve the object information from the Fourier image. A
simple model based on the computation of the differences
between any of the four quadrants of the Fourier image plane
has been employed together with a spatial 1D integration along
the y direction. Nevertheless, more refined algorithms can be
used. For example algorithms based on ptychography [19] can
be exploited to retrieve also phase information on the object.
As an example, we report in figure 4 a plot of a Fourier image
for a scanning point and the retrieved image for an object
composed of three particles, in a rotated L configuration.
The corner object is separeted 50 nm and 60 nm from the
other two respectively. All of them are placed at 20 nm from
the array of nanoantennas. The three particles emerge quite
clearly once the difference between the top left corner and the
bottom right corner of the Fourier image is computed for each
scanning position. This example show how it is possible to
image details, whose dimensions are far below the diffraction-
limit for the considered wavelength of 800 nm. Moreover,
as anticipated before, due to the simplicity of the structure,
several different arrays can be combined onto the same surface,
in order to have many parallel sensors with different properties,
depending on their geometrical characteristics.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this work, we have presented two different designs
that have been developed in our group, within a research
project aiming at developing novel optical antennas devices
for realistic metrology optical systems. The two designs are
characterized by different working range and characteristics.
The first example uses silicon nanoresonators embedded in a
fused silica matrix in order to shape an incoming wavefront
to an arbitrary wavefront. A device, consisting of silicon
nanoresonators, able to focus a plane wave at 3 from the array
of nanoresonators, has been presented together with numerical
and experimental results. The second design employs plas-
monic nanoantennas for near-field sensing in optical metrology
applications. The simplicity of the structure and the reduced
losses make this configuration quite attractive for metrology
systems. Numerical results, showing the imaging capabilities
of the plasmonic nanoantennas, demonstrate the feasibility of
the solution as a super-resolution optical sensor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work has been supported by the TNO Early Research
Program (ERP) 3D Nanomanufacturing Instruments.
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