Tuning highly-sensitive plasmonic structures from the visible to the infrared

ANYL 326

Rostislav Bukasov, bukrostyur@yahoo.com, Michael Hukill, mhukill@gmail.com, and Jennifer Shumaker-Parry, shumaker-parry@chem.utah.edu. Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, 315 S 1400 E, Rm 2020, Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Crescent-shaped plasmonic structures with tunable optical properties were fabricated using a nanosphere templating process. A combination of colloidal templating, metal film deposition and ion beam etching produces metallic crescent structures with uniform size, shape, and orientation. The wavelengths of the localized plasmon resonances may be tuned from 600 to 2800 nm by controlling the crescents' structural properties. The crescents' plasmon resonances exhibit a strong dependence on the local dielectric environment with sensitivity factors of up to 800 nm/refractive index unit, depending on the crescent size and the resonance wavelength. The high sensitivity and tunability of the crescents' optical properties over a wide wavelength range make the structures a good platform for sensing applications.