Abstract
We demonstrate a concept of optical data storage through plasmonic resonances of metallic nanostructures. Metallic nanostructures exhibit strong variations in their reflectance and/or transmittance spectra due to surface plasmon polariton resonances. We study the variations in spectra through 50×50 arrays of repeated unit cells covering a total area of ∼50×50 μ m 2 . Each cell contains ten different nanofeatures, such as an ellipse, a ring, a circle, a triangle, a square, etc. The size of each unit-cell is 500×500 nm 2 , and the periodicity is 1.0 μm. The variations in spectra are obvious enough to be distinguished and then retrieved. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.