Transparent carbon nanotube film as sensitive material for surface plasmon resonance based optical sensors

Abstract Semiconductive or metallic single wall carbon nanotubes have been deposited on gold nanoparticles monolayer and used as plasmonic based gas sensor. The coupling between carbon nanotubes and gold nanoparticles has the aim of combining the reactivity of the carbon nanotubes towards hazardous gases, such as H 2 , CO, NO 2 , with the localized surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles, which it is known to be extremely sensitive to the changes in the dielectric properties of the surrounding medium, a working mechanism used for sensor devices. Two different techniques, ink-jet printer and dropcasting, were used for depositing the transparent carbon nanotubes film on the plasmonic layer. Ink-jet printed metallic single wall carbon nanotubes showed high sensitivity toward H 2 at low operative temperature with the detection of low concentration of H 2 . On the contrary, the semiconductive single wall carbon nanotubes displayed very poor gas sensing properties.