Excitation-Transfer Plasmonic Nanosensors Based on Dynamical Phase-Transitions

CORONADO EDUARDO A.

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2012 vol. 116 p. 18937 - 18937

1932-7447

ynamical phase transitions (DPTs) describe the abrupt change in the dynamical properties of open systems when a single control parameter is slightly modified. Recently, we found that this phenomenon is also present in a simple model of a linear array of metallic nanoparticles in the form of a localized?delocalized DPT. In this work we show how to take advantage of DPTs to design a new kind of plasmonic sensor which should own some unique characteristics. For example, if it were used as a plasmon ruler, it would not follow the so-called universal plasmon ruler equation [Nano Letters2007, 7, 2080?2088], exhibiting instead an on?off switching feature. This basically means that a signal should be observed only when the control/measured parameter, that is, a distance in the case of plasmon rulers, has a very precise and predetermined value. Here, we demonstrate their feasibility and unique characteristics, showing that they combine high sensitivity with this on?off switching feature in ter