Copolymer template control of gold nanoparticle synthesis via thermal annealing

Alexandre Plaud (1) , Aurélien Sarrazin (1) , Jérémie Béal (1) , Julien Proust (1) , Pascal Royer (1) , Jean-Louis Bijeon (1) , Jerome Plain (1) , Pierre-Michel Adam (1) , Thomas Maurer (1)

1 LNIO - Laboratoire de Nanotechnologie et d'Instrumentation Optique

Here we present an original process combining top-down and bottom-up approaches by annealing a thin gold film evaporated onto a hole template made by etching a PS–PMMA copolymer film. Such process allows a better control of the gold nanoparticle size distribution which provides a sharper localized surface plasmon resonance. This makes such route appealing for sensing applications since the figure of merit of the Au nanoparticles obtained after thermal evaporation is more than doubled. Such process could besides allow tuning the localized surface plasmon resonance by using copolymers with various molecular weights and thus be attractive for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.

Keywords: Localized surface plasmon resonance; Optical sensor; Copolymer template; Reactive ion etching; Gold nanoparticle; Thermal annealing; Composite nanostructure

Domains: Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics; Polymers

Alexandre Plaud, Aurélien Sarrazin, Jérémie Béal, Julien Proust, Pascal Royer, et al.. Copolymer template control of gold nanoparticle synthesis via thermal annealing. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 2013, 15 (12), ⟨10.1007/s11051-013-2109-0⟩. ⟨hal-02298425⟩