Obtain Quadruple Intense Plasmonic Resonances from Multilayered Gold Nanoshells by Silver Coating: Application in Multiplex Sensing

Abstract

Four intense and separate localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) absorption peaks have been obtained in the gold-dielectric–gold–silver multilayer nanoshells. The silver coating on the gold shell results in a new LSPR peak at about 400 nm corresponding to the $$ {{\left| {\omega_{+}^{-}} \right\rangle}_{Ag }} $$ mode. The intense local electric field concentrated in the silver shell at the wavelength of 400 nm indicates that this new plasmonic band is coming from the symmetric coupling between the antibonding silver shell plasmon mode and the inner sphere plasmon. Increasing the silver shell thickness also leads to the intensity increasing of the $$ {{\left| {\omega_{+}^{-}} \right\rangle}_{Au }} $$ mode and blue shift of $$ \left| {\omega_{-}^{+}} \right\rangle $$ and $$ \left| {\omega_{-}^{-}} \right\rangle $$ modes. Therefore, quadruple intense plasmonic resonances in the visible region could be achieved in gold-dielectric–gold–silver multilayer nanoshells by tuning the geometrical parameters. And the quadruple intense plasmonic resonances in the visible region provide well potential for multiplex biosensing based on LSPR.