Engineering Disordered Many-particle Plasmonic Nanoclusters for Wafer-scale Uniform and Giant Electromagnetic Field Enhancement

Scalable plasmonic technologies face a critical trade-off: few-body architectures offer high enhancement but are sensitive to fabrication flaws, while scalable methods like solid-state dewetting yield large, low-enhancement gaps.

We introduce a paradigm shift using a many-body plasmonic architecture inspired by statistical mechanics.

By moving toward the continuum limit (N>>1), local geometric variations are statistically averaged out, effectively decoupling optical performance from microscopic disorder.

We implement this concept via a lithography- and etching-free, multi-step dewetting strategy, creating wafer-scale nanoclusters.

This process strategically forms a robust many-body system by introducing numerous small satellite nanoparticles between larger particles.

Crucially, this design achieves a high collective enhancement that surpasses even optimized few-body systems, despite having larger individual gaps.

Under optimized conditions, these substrates exhibit a surface-enhanced Raman scattering enhancement factor approaching 4 x 108 with unprecedented reproducibility (RSD of ~10%).

This scalable, low-cost concept establishes a practical route toward reproducible wafer-scale nanophotonic platforms for sensing, spectroscopy, and quantum technologies.