Issue 25, 2015

Drift-corrected nanoplasmonic hydrogen sensing by polarization

Abstract

Accurate and reliable hydrogen sensors are an important enabling technology for the large-scale introduction of hydrogen as a fuel or energy storage medium. As an example, in a hydrogen-powered fuel cell car of the type now introduced to the market, more than 15 hydrogen sensors are required for safe operation. To enable the long-term use of plasmonic sensors in this particular context, we introduce a concept for drift-correction based on light polarization utilizing symmetric sensor and sensing material nanoparticles arranged in a heterodimer. In this way the inert gold sensor element of the plasmonic dimer couples to a sensing-active palladium element if illuminated in the dimer-parallel polarization direction but not the perpendicular one. Thus the perpendicular polarization readout can be used to efficiently correct for drifts occurring due to changes of the sensor element itself or due to non-specific events like a temperature change. Furthermore, by the use of a polarizing beamsplitter, both polarization signals can be read out simultaneously making it possible to continuously correct the sensor response to eliminate long-term drift and ageing effects. Since our approach is generic, we also foresee its usefulness for other applications of nanoplasmonic sensors than hydrogen sensing.

Graphical abstract: Drift-corrected nanoplasmonic hydrogen sensing by polarization

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
21 Mar 2015
Accepted
29 May 2015
First published
03 Jun 2015
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2015,7, 10963-10969

Author version available

Drift-corrected nanoplasmonic hydrogen sensing by polarization

C. Wadell and C. Langhammer, Nanoscale, 2015, 7, 10963 DOI: 10.1039/C5NR01818H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements