title: Polymer nanofibers embedded with aligned gold nanorods: a new platform for plasmonic studies and optical sensing.
abstract: This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of polymer nanofibers embedded with gold nanorods in uniaxial alignment for applications in optical waveguiding and sensing. Using a waveguiding approach, we demonstrated highly efficient excitation of localized surface plasmon resonance in the embedded gold nanorods with a photon-to-plasmon-conversion efficiency as high as 70% for a single nanorod at its longitudinal resonance wavelength. On the basis of waveguiding polymer nanofibers embedded with gold nanorods, we further demonstrated compact optical humidity sensors with a response time of 110 ms and an operation optical power as low as 500 pW.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Department of Optical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China.
authors.forename: Pan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Younan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Limin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Yibin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ying
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D006813:Humidity; D043942:Nanotubes / Q000737:chemistry*; D055096:Optical Devices; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014867:Water / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D014867:Water; D006046:Gold