Modelling of sensitivity of plasmon sensory elements based on silver nanoparticles obtained by laser evaporation and ablation

A comparison of the sensitivity of the spectral position of plasmon resonance calculated by numerical methods to a change in the refractive index of the environment for ellipsoidal and spherical silver nanoparticles with a dielectric shell synthesized by laser ablation has been performed. It has been shown that sensitivity is higher for nanoparticles with the shape of a prolate ellipsoid than for spherical nanoparticles. The modeling has shown that the optimal thickness of the dielectric shell should be 10–12 nm and its refractive index should be 1.6. With this, a sensitivity of the plasmon sensor of 32 nm/RIU (RIU is refractive index unit) may be provided.