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Nanoantenna-enhanced gas sensing in a single tailored nanofocus

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 631–636 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metallic nanostructures possess plasmonic resonances that spatially confine light on the nanometre scale. In the ultimate limit of a single nanostructure, the electromagnetic field can be strongly concentrated in a volume of only a few hundred nm3 or less. This optical nanofocus is ideal for plasmonic sensing. Any object that is brought into this single spot will influence the optical nanostructure resonance with its dielectric properties. Here, we demonstrate antenna-enhanced hydrogen sensing at the single-particle level. We place a single palladium nanoparticle near the tip region of a gold nanoantenna and detect the changing optical properties of the system on hydrogen exposure by dark-field microscopy. Our method avoids any inhomogeneous broadening and statistical effects that would occur in sensors based on nanoparticle ensembles. Our concept paves the road towards the observation of single catalytic processes in nanoreactors and biosensing on the single-molecule level.

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Figure 1: Schematic representation of antenna-enhanced single-particle hydrogen sensing.
Figure 2: Electromagnetic finite-difference time-domain simulation of the local electric fields.
Figure 3: Manufacturing process.
Figure 4: Optical-scattering measurements of a single palladium–gold triangle antenna on hydrogen exposure in dependence on separation d between the gold antenna and the palladium particle.
Figure 5: Optical scattering measurements of a single palladium–gold rod antenna on hydrogen exposure in dependence on the separation d between the gold antenna and the palladium particle.
Figure 6: Control experiments.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank X. Meng for help with the metal deposition at the Microlab Facility of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of California, Berkeley. The SEM studies were supported by the Molecular Foundry at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The experimental set-up was funded by the grant “A Synergistic Approach to the Development of New Classes of Hydrogen Storage Materials” from the US Department of Energy, DE-AC03-76SF00098. We acknowledge S. Hein for his material visualizations. We thank Th. Schumacher and M. Lippitz for discussions and comments. We thank A. Tittl and N. Strohfeldt for help with the measurements and data analysis. N.L., M.L.T. and A.P.A. acknowledge financial support through the Plasmonic-Enhanced Catalysis Project of the Air Force Office of Science Research, award number FA9550-10-1-0504. M.H. and H.G. were financially supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SPP1391 and FOR557), by BMBF (13N9048 and 13N10146) and by Landesstiftung BW.

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  1. Na Liu, Ming L. Tang and Mario Hentschel: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, and Materials Sciences Division, University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

    Na Liu, Ming L. Tang & A. Paul Alivisatos

  2. 4. Physikalisches Institut and Research Center SCoPE, Universität Stuttgart, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany

    Mario Hentschel & Harald Giessen

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All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper.

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Correspondence to A. Paul Alivisatos.

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Liu, N., Tang, M., Hentschel, M. et al. Nanoantenna-enhanced gas sensing in a single tailored nanofocus. Nature Mater 10, 631–636 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3029

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