Enhanced optical transmission through sub-wavelength centered-polygonal hole arrays in silver thin film on silica substrate

We numerically investigated the enhanced optical transmission through sub-wavelength centered-polygonal hole arrays (CPHA) in a thin Ag film deposited on the silica substrate. In octagonal and decagonal-CPHAs, we observed new hybrid transmission characteristics that were inherited from both crystalline and quasi-crystalline hole arrays. This peculiar nature was attributed to the unique arrangement of CPHAs which can be covered with copies of a single unit cell as in crystalline arrays, and their rotational symmetry as observed in quasi-crystalline arrays. Hybrid natures in CPHAs were further investigated in the transmission spectra and Fourier space representations of the arrays. Contributions from the nearest neighbor hole-to-hole distance to enhanced transmission were analyzed in order to quantify the plasmonic contributions from the Air/Ag interface and Silica/Ag interface. We also investigated the impact of layer structure, Air/Ag/Air versus Air/Ag/Silica in the transmissions and found that in CPHAs in Air/Ag/Silica structures, contributions from the Air/Ag interface became dominant in contrast to crystalline hole arrays with lower fold symmetry.