LSPR Nanosensors with Highly Ordered Gold Nanoparticles Fabricated on Nanodimpled Aluminium Templates

Abstract

The fabrication and characterization of a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) based optical nanosensor, which utilizes highly ordered gold nanoparticles as transducers are presented in this work. The nanoparticles are synthetized using nanodimpled aluminium templates, which were prepared by a selective chemical etching of the porous anodic alumina grown over an aluminium sheet. The formed nanoparticles were directly transferred to PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) based microfluidic cells, where their LSPR transmittance spectra were measured. The effect of the particle size and distribution on the LSPR bulk refractive index sensitivity is investigated.