Engineering Thermoswitchable Lithographic Hybrid Gold Nanorods as Plasmonic Devices for Sensing and Active Plasmonics Applications

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• 作者：Mai Nguyen ; Xiaonan Sun ; Emmanuelle Lacaze ; Pamina Martina Winkler ; Andreas Hohenau ; Joachim R. Krenn ; C茅line Bourdillon ; Azzdine Lamouri ; Johan Grand ; Georges L茅vi ; Le茂la Boubekeur-Lecaque ; Claire Mangeney ; Nordin F茅lidj
• 刊名：ACS Photonics
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：August 19, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：2
• 期：8
• 页码：1199-1208
• 全文大小：728K
• ISSN：2330-4022

文摘

In this article, we aim to investigate the sensitivity of regular arrays of hybrid plasmonic nanostructures to variations in properties of the local environment (temperature, refractive index, polymer thickness), in the context of sensing and active plasmonic applications. A proper description and characterization of such hybrid systems is indeed essential in order to provide designed criteria for efficient stimuli-responsive devices. As an ideal model, we introduce a novel kind of hybrid plasmonic core鈥搒hell system made of lithographic gold nanorods (GNRs), coated by a thermosensitive polymer shell based on poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM). The grafting of the polymer on the GNRs results from a multistep but simple approach in order to confine the pNIPAM brushes on the GNRs and to control the thickness of the polymer coating. We show that the optical response of the plasmonic hybrid structures (GNR@pNIPAM) is strongly modified upon a variation of the external temperature, due to a physical change of the conformation of the polymer coating. These thermo-induced changes of the optical properties can be optimized by changing the aspect ratio of the GNRs and the polymer thickness to obtain very efficient optical reporters of the polymer state in a controlled and reversible manner. This work could provide an important step toward the use of GNR@pNIPAM structures for applications spanning from opto-mechanical modulators to nanoscale adhesion and molecular sensing.