Local plasmon excitations in one-dimensional array of metal nanowires for sensor applications

Optical properties of a one-dimensional periodic array of subwavelength metal nanowires in the regime of local plasmon excitation are investigated experimentally and theoretically. Both gas and liquid sensing by one-dimensional gold nanowires on a glass substrate produced by holographic lithography are demonstrated experimentally. The obtained spectral sensitivity of a local plasmon sensor to the refractive index of the environment is found comparable to that of a surface plasmon polariton sensor based on the grating coupler effect. The influence of nanowire shape on spectral sensitivity is studied theoretically in a differential formalism framework using a curvilinear coordinate transformation for triangular, trapezoidal, and rectangular cross sections of the nanowires. For nanowires with trapezoidal cross section, theoretical calculations for the spectral sensitivity to variation of the refractive index of the environment agree well with experimental data.