Photocatalytic deposition of a gold nanoparticle onto the top of a SiN cantilever tip

We propose a new technique for depositing a gold nanoparticle onto the tip of a dielectric support. We employed the photocatalytic effect of titanium dioxide for the deposition. When the titanium dioxide immersed in a solution including gold ions is subject to optical exposure, the excited electrons...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of microscopy (Oxford) Vol. 202; no. 1; pp. 100 - 103
Main Authors Okamoto, T., Yamaguchi, I.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Science Ltd 01.04.2001
Subjects
Evanescent wave
field enhancement
gold particle
near‐field optical microscopy
photocatalytic effect
photochemical deposition
surface plasmon resonance
titanium dioxide
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Summary:We propose a new technique for depositing a gold nanoparticle onto the tip of a dielectric support. We employed the photocatalytic effect of titanium dioxide for the deposition. When the titanium dioxide immersed in a solution including gold ions is subject to optical exposure, the excited electrons in the conduction band reduce gold ions into gold metal. Illumination by an evanescent wave generated with a total reflection configuration limits the deposition region to the very tip. In experiments we obtained 100–300 nm gold particles on SiN cantilever tips for atomic force microscopes. The contrast of evanescent interference fringes measured by a near‐field scanning optical microscope with this gold nanoparticle probe has proved to be higher than that with a non‐deposited SiN probe by a factor of 1.5.
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ISSN:0022-2720
1365-2818
DOI:10.1046/j.1365-2818.2001.00884.x