Full Color Plasmonic Nanostructured Surfaces and Their Sensor Applications

Abstract

In this Article, we report on plasmonic nanostructured surfaces with almost all colors by nanosphere lithography. The feature sizes of the plasmonic nanostructures can be controlled by O2 reactive ion etching and gold evaporation conditions. The optical properties of the plasmonic nanostructured surfaces can be easily tuned in the visible light region by changing etching time, and the color of plasmonic nanostructured surfaces does not change with the viewing angle up to 45°. More importantly, such surfaces show high bulk sensitivity to the refractive index variation, and they can be used as label-free, real-time biosensors to detect biomacromolecules.