Dual dielectric cap layer gold nanoslits array optical resonance filter with large figure-of-merit

In this work, we investigate a gold nanoslits array optical transmission filter with dual dielectric cap layers on top of the metal nanoslits. By integrating a low index of refraction dielectric layer between a high index of refraction dielectric cap layer and the gold nanoslits, a narrow spectral linewidth optical filter with a transmission peak far away from the Rayleigh anomaly wavelength is shown. Furthermore, we propose a figure-of-merit as the ratio of the spectral distance between a transmission peak and the Rayleigh anomaly over the spectral linewidth to characterize the performance of gold nanoslits optical filters. It is shown that dual dielectric cap gold nanoslits array optical filters have significantly larger figure-of-merits than that of traditional single dielectric cap gold nanoslits array optical filters.