Rational design of on-chip refractive index sensors based on lattice plasmon resonances (Presentation Recording)

Abstract

Lattice plasmon resonances (LPRs), which originate from the plasmonic-photonic coupling in gold or silver nanoparticle arrays, possess ultra-narrow linewidth by suppressing the radiative damping and provide the possibility to develop the plasmonic sensors with high figure of merit (FOM). However, the plasmonic-photonic coupling is greatly suppressed when the nanoparticles are immobilized on substrates because the diffraction orders are cut off at the nanoparticle-substrate interfaces. Here, we develop the rational design of LPR structures for the high-performance, on-chip plasmonic sensors based on both orthogonal and parallel coupling. Our finite-difference time-domain simulations in the core/shell SiO2/Au nanocylinder arrays (NCAs) reveal that new modes of localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) show up when the aspect ratio of the NCAs is increased. The height-induced LSPRs couple with the superstrate diffraction orders to generate the robust LPRs in asymmetric environment. The high wavelength sensitivity and narrow linewidth in these LPRs lead to the plasmonic sensors with high FOM and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Wide working wavelengths from visible to near-infrared are also achieved by tuning the parameters of the NCAs. Moreover, the wide detection range of refractive index is obtained in the parallel LPR structure. The electromagnetic field distributions in the NCAs demonstrate the height-enabled tunability of the plasmonic “hot spots” at the sub-nanoparticles resolution and the coupling between these “hot spots” with the superstrate diffraction waves, which are responsible for the high performance LPRs-based on-chip refractive index sensors.