Monitoring Solvent Evaporation from Thin Films by Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance

PAULA C. ANGELOMÉ; LUIS M. LIZ-MARZÁN

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Año: 2010 vol. 114 p. 18379 - 18383

1932-7447

In this work, new composite materials consisting of a submonolayer of metallic nanoparticles (spheres or decahedra) chemically bound to a glass slide and covered with a sol-gel thin film (with or without templating)were synthesized. Nanoparticles can be fully covered by well-ordered mesoporous thin films, when templated films are synthesized. The particles underneath the porous films remain accessible but not in direct contact with the outer medium, and their plasmon band shifts with changes in the refractive index of the solvent that wets the film. Taking advantage of this phenomenon, we monitored the evaporation of solvents through changes in the plasmon band position for various thin films and solvents, using UV-visible spectroscopy. This procedure can be generalized to different metal particles, thin films, and solvents, thus paving the way toward new composite materials containing an active layer of metallic particles that can be used to investigate the interactions between solvents and oxide thin films.