Gold crescent nanodisk array for nanoantenna-enhanced sensing in subwavelength areas

Benefitting from the antenna effect and localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), a metal nanoparticle with a designed morphology has the amazing ability to confine light energy into the required extremely small volume, whose refractive index largely affects the optical properties of the whole metal nanoparticle. In this work, the optical spectra and near-field distribution of a gold nanocrescent array were investigated both experimentally and theoretically. To find out the LSPR wavelength and the enhancement using different morphologies of sharp tips, the spectra of gold nanocrescent arrays with different waist widths (d) were first measured, which were then confirmed and analyzed using the finite difference time-domain method and the hybridization theory. At last, the LSPR of this array with 100 nm diameter dielectric nanodisks was studied for sensing in subwavelength areas. Our results showed that because of its giant nanoantenna-enhanced electromagnetic field at the two tips, this gold nanocrescent array could be a suitable local senor to sense the variation of a local medium in a subwavelength area. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America.