Formation of oriented metal nanostructures by polarized light irradiation for optical sensing

Highly sensitive optical sensing of molecules can be achieved by using localized surface plasmon generated at metal nanostructures, such as SERS-based sensing. We fabricated SERS-active silver nanostructures by using polarized light irradiation, and evaluated their response properties to rhodamine 6G. In this paper, it is shown that strong Raman signals of rhodamine 6G and large variation in optical transmission have been obtained. Especially, the transmission spectra of the silver nanostructures grown under the irradiation of polarized light showed unique polarizing properties derived from different modes of localized surface plasmons, which would be useful in smart optical sensing.