Selecting silver nanoshells for colorimetric sensors

In this work the use of silver nanoshell as a starting point for the establishment of colorimetric sensor platforms, under solar illumination, was evaluated. Mie theory was explored on the analysis of the nanosensor linearity and sensitivity, considering 4 different color spaces and the influence of the nanoshell geometry. A high performance plasmonic nanoplatform was identified. The nanosensor platform based on nanoshells, with 35 nm SiO
2
core radius and 25 nm Ag shell thickness, showed sensitivity values up to 2.78 RIU
^-1
and linearity higher than 0.96, considering the Hue parameter of the HSV color space. The identification of optimized plasmonic nanoplatforms may extend the use naked-eye colorimetric applications in low-resource environments.