We present the simulation, fabrication and optical characterization of plasmonic gold bowtie nanoantennas on a semiconducting GaAs substrate as geometrical parameters such as size, feed gap, height and polarization of the incident light are varied. The surface plasmon resonance was probed using white light reflectivity on an array of nominally identical, 35nm thick Au antennas. To elucidate the influence of the semiconducting, high refractive index substrate, all experiments were compared using nominally identical structures on glass. Besides a linear shift of the surface plasmon resonance from 1.08eV to 1.58eV when decreasing the triangle size from 170nm to 100nm on GaAs, we observed a global redshift by 0.25 +- 0.05eV with respect to nominally identical structures on glass. By performing polarization resolved measurements and comparing results with finite difference time domain simulations, we determined the near field coupling between the two triangles composing the bowtie antenna to be 8x stronger when the antenna is on a glass substrate compared to when it is on a GaAs substrate. The results obtained are of strong relevance for the integration of lithographically defined plasmonic nanoantennas on semiconducting substrates and, therefore, for the development of novel optically active plasmonic-semiconducting nanostructures.
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