Surface effects and gold-nanostructure surface coating of whispering-gallery microresonators

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study:

The purpose of this study is to explore the surface effects of high-quality-factor optical microsphere resonators and thin-film-coated microresonators in various ambient gases. In this work, we present a systematic study of the assembly and characterization of gold nanostructures. We employ a wet-chemical synthesis method for growing gold nanorods and a directed electrochemical method for assembly of gold nanowires. The adhesion methods of gold nanostructures on high-quality-factor optical microsphere resonators are also investigated.

Findings and Conclusions:

A novel method is employed for measuring thermal accommodation coefficients of various gases like nitrogen, helium and ambient air on several coated and uncoated surfaces of fused-silica microresonators, operating at room temperature. This method is further extended to measure the absorption coefficient of a surface film or water layer on a fused-silica microresonator, and provides a novel method to find the water layer desorption and adsorption rates on the surface of a microresonator in the presence of gases like ambient air and nitrogen. We have adapted methods for growing gold nanorods of different aspect ratios (AR), and developed a novel method of growing high-AR (20-400) gold nanowires from low-AR gold nanorods. Various methods were discovered to coat these gold nanostructures and carbon nanotubes on the fused-silica surface. The most successful method involves surface modification with MPMDMS (i.e., silanization) before coating with gold nanorods. These coating methods have made microresonators useful for plasmonic sensing applications.