Plasmonic properties of film over nanowell surfaces fabricated by nanosphere lithography

In this work, a detailed and systematic study of the plasmonic properties of a novel film over nanowell surface is investigated. These nanostructures are fabricated using nanosphere lithography and reactive ion etching and structurally characterized by AFM and SEM. The resulting structures show remarkably narrow plasmon bands in reflectance spectra (as little as 0.10 eV) and greater sensitivity to external dielectric environment than has been seen in other nanoparticle systems, resulting in an improvement in the figure of merit (FOM = refractive index sensitivity (eV·RIU-1)/full width at half-maximum (eV)) for refractive index sensing. Theoretical modeling for the plasmon spectra of these nanostructures is done using discrete dipole approximation code under periodic boundary conditions. The modeling results match the measurements accurately in aspects of the variation of the plasmon line shape with altering internanowell distance and dielectric environment.