%0 Journal Article
%T Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance with Five-Branched Gold Nanostars in a Plastic Optical Fiber for Bio-Chemical Sensor Implementation
%A Nunzio Cennamo
%A Girolamo D'Agostino
%A Alice Don¨¤
%A Giacomo Dacarro
%A Piersandro Pallavicini
%A Maria Pesavento
%A Luigi Zeni
%J Sensors
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/s131114676
%X In this paper a refractive index sensor based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) in a Plastic Optical Fiber (POF), is presented and experimentally tested. LSPR is achieved exploiting five-branched gold nanostars (GNS) obtained using Triton X-100 in a seed-growth synthesis. They have the uncommon feature of three localized surface plasmon resonances. The strongest LSPRs fall in two ranges, one in the 600¨C900 nm range (LSPR 2) and the other one in the 1,100¨C1,600 nm range (LSPR 3), both sensible to refractive index changes. Anyway, due to the extremely strong attenuation (>10 2 dB/m) of the employed POF in the 1,100¨C1,600 nm range, only LSPR 2 will be exploited for refractive index change measurements, useful for bio-chemical sensing applications, as a proof of principle of the possibility of realizing a compact, low cost and easy-to-use GNS based device.
%K localized surface plasmon resonance
%K plastic optical fiber
%K gold nanostars
%K chemical sensors
%U http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/13/11/14676