Performance analysis of different plasmonic metallic nanoparticles using for ultra-sensitive optical sensor

In this paper we introduce a nanosensor that able to detect optical wave using plasmonic nanoparticles of different metallic materials. Electro-optical material is used to control the refractive index of the surrounding plasmonic nanoparticles medium. A half width full maximum of the absorbed light is also calculated for five different nanoparticles. The nanoparticles are in spherical shape and could be gold, silver, aluminum, copper, or vanadium dioxide. We simulate the proposed structure using finite difference time domain method, FDTD, and calculate the refractive index sensitivity of each nanoparticle material. We noted that, the gold nanoparticles gives the best sensitivity. In additional, FWHM and the absorbance of gold nanoparticles are also given for different refractive index of the electro-optical material from 1.1 to 1.9 with step 0.2.