3D nanoporous antennas as a platform for high sensitivity IR plasmonic sensing

Nanoporous gold can be exploited as plasmonic material for enhanced spectroscopy both in the visible and in the near-infrared spectral regions. In particular, the peculiar morphology of such a substrate leads to a higher field confinement with respect to conventional plasmonic materials. This property can be exploited to achieve extremely high sensitivity to the changes in environmental conditions, making it an interesting tool for the development of sensors and biosensors. Here, we compared the sensitivity of a plasmonic resonator made of nanoporous gold with a similar structure made of homogeneous gold. To assess the enhanced sensitivity the same stoichiometric quantity of dielectric material was deposited via Atomic Layer Deposition onto the two considered structures. Experimental results proved the higher sensitivity was achievable using nanoporous gold. In particular. such 3D nanoporous structures can be proposed as a promising sensing platform in the near-infrared with a sensitivity over 4.000 nm/RIU. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement