Design and fabrication of an opto-mechanical antenna in the NIR range

In this study we present a novel device for the direct transduction of optical radiation in the near-infrared region into mechanical actuation, which is based on a plasmonic optical nanoantenna integrated in a microcantilever. We propose and demonstrate the feasibility of a simple fabrication process consisting in the nano-tailoring of a commercially available Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) cantilever by means of the Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling technique. Furthermore, the comprehensive analysis of the device performance characteristics included in this work reveals the different sensitivity values of these characteristics to the fabrication process tolerances of the most relevant geometric design parameters.