title: Metallic nanowires can lead to wavelength-scale microlenses and microlens arrays.
abstract: We theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that the diffraction of microstructures based on silver nanowires leads to very efficient microfocusing effects. Pairs of parallel nanowires act as ultrasmall cylindrical microlenses with diffraction-limited resolution in the Fresnel region. This is a new diffraction scheme to make micron-sized optical lenses with higher transmittance than plasmonic microlens based on nano-aperture arrays. Calculations based on the scalar Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integral highlights the pure scalar diffractive contribution. Thus, the plasmon contribution is negligible in such micron-sized metallic geometry. We demonstrate that two-dimensional grids of nanowires can be used to fabricate dense arrays of microlenses, i.e. 10000x10000 DPI (dots per inch).
authors: Univ. Grenoble 1 / CNRS, LIPhy UMR 5588, Grenoble, F-38041, France.
authors: Soraya
authors: S
authors: Zaiba
authors: Timothe
authors: T
authors: Kouriba
authors: Omar
authors: O
authors: Ziane
authors: Olivier
authors: O
authors: Stéphan
authors: Jocelyne
authors: J
authors: Bosson
authors: Guy
authors: G
authors: Vitrant
authors: Patrice L
authors: PL
authors: Baldeck