Flexible integration of metallic nanostructures on fiber tips for plasmonic sensing

Metal nanostructures, e.g., nanohole arrays, have attracted a large amount of interests due to their extraordinary properties and potential to boost light-matter interactions in the subwavelength scale. Optical fibers offer a portable and accessible platform to propose novel devices. However, patterning of metal nanohole arrays on optical fibers always requires complicated techniques or adhesion layers, which leads to an expensive, time-comsuming fabrication procedure or potential contaminations inside the nanoholes, therefore a degraded performance. Herein, we report a novel route to propose fiber-based plasmonic devices by directly transferring a gold nanohole array onto the endface of a multi-mode fiber. A replication-releasing method is applied to achieve the high-troughout transfer and integration. As a potential application, sensing with aqueous media is highlighted. These findings pave a new way to propose plasmonic devices for wider scopes of applications across the nanophotonics.