The research of the fabrication of plasmonic nanowire waveguides and circuits for nanophotonic circuitry applications by lithographic fabrication method has attracted much attention. Here we report an approach for fabricating metal nanowire networks by electron beam lithography and metal film deposition techniques. The gold nanowire structures without adhesion layer are fabricated on quartz substrates and a thin layer of Al2O3 film is deposited using atom layer deposition for immobilizing the nanostructures. During the Al2O3 deposition process, the thermal annealing effect can decrease the surface plasmon loss on the nanowires. Y-shaped gold nanowire networks are fabricated and the surface plasmons can be routed to different branches by controlling the length of the main nanowire and the polarization of the excitation light. The simulation results of the electric field distributions show that the zigzag distribution of electric field on the main wire determines the surface plasmon routing. The interference of surface plasmons in the nanowire network can modulate the output intensity to realize Boolean logic operations. AND, OR, XOR and NOT gates are realized in three-terminal nanowire networks, and NAND, NOR and XNOR gates are realized in four-terminal nanowire networks. This work provides a new way for on-chip integrated plasmonic circuits.
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