Investigation of the Refractive Index Sensitivity of Hexagonally Arranged Gold Nanoparticles With Finite Element Method (FEM)

In biosensing, label-free detection techniques have the advantage of a shorter analysis time and can be more cost-effective. In this paper a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) sensor based on hexagonally arranged ellipsoidal gold nanoparticles is designed and investigated by finite element method (FEM) via COMSOL Multiphysics. The wave optics module was used to investigate the relationship between the geometrical properties of the nanoparticle arrangements and their refractive index sensitivity. The effect of different linearly and circularly polarized light was further investigated. The purpose of this work is to optimize the arrangement of experimentally realizable ellipsoidal gold nanoparticle arrangements to maximize the performance of the LSPR-based sensor device and to compare the simulation results with experimentally obtained sensitivities, and present detailed geometrical optimizations.