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Optical Properties of Noncontinuous Gold Shell Engineered on Silica Mesosphere

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Abstract

The optical properties of individual noncontinuous shells with different gold coverage are investigated by the single-particle dark field scattering measurements and single-particle surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) measurements at different excitation wavelengths. By controlling the growth of gold seeds, multi-metallic nanogaps/crevices with different optical responses are assembled on silica mesospheres forming noncontinuous shells that can be confirmed through the transmission electron microscope images. We find the surface plasmon resonance of single shell red-shifts from 510 to 680 nm with the increase of gold coverage. At the excitation of 532 and 785 nm, the best enhancements about 2.0 × 105 and 1.1 × 107 are obtained on spheres with ∼60 and 83 % gold coverage, respectively. The weak polarization-dependent SERS indicates that the enhancement is from the multi-gaps on single noncontinuous shell. This optical tunable and SERS active noncontinuous gold shell can be applied in biosensing, ultra trace detection, and molecule analysis needing multi-wavelengths excitation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 11274004, 10904171), Beijing talent support (grant no. 2011D005016000005), Beijing Nova Program (2011079), and Beijing Natural Science Foundation (grant no. 1122012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory for Nano-Photonics and Nano-Structure (NPNS), Department of Physics, Capital Normal University, Beijing, 100048, China

    Longkun Yang, Zhipeng Li, Peijie Wang, Lisheng Zhang & Yan Fang

  2. Department of Chemistry, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Longkun Yang

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  1. Longkun Yang
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  2. Zhipeng Li
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  4. Lisheng Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhipeng Li or Yan Fang.

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Yang, L., Li, Z., Wang, P. et al. Optical Properties of Noncontinuous Gold Shell Engineered on Silica Mesosphere. Plasmonics 9, 121–127 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-013-9604-0

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