Simulation of localized surface plasmon in metallic nanoparticles embedded in amorphous silicon

We propose the development and realization of a plasmonic structure based on the LSP interaction of metal nanoparticles with an embedding matrix of amorphous silicon. This structure need to be usable as the basis for a sensor device applied in biomedical applications, after proper functionalization with selective antibodies. The final sensor structure needs to be low cost, compact and disposable. The study reported in this paper aims to analyze different materials for nanoparticles and embedding medium composition. Metals of interest for nanoparticles composition are Aluminum, Gold and Alumina. As a preliminary approach to this device, we study in this work the optical properties of metal nanoparticles embedded in an amorphous silicon matrix, as a function of size, aspect-ratio and metal type. Following an analysis based on the exact solution of the Mie theory, experimental measurements realized with arrays of metal nanoparticles are compared with the simulations.