Shape-engineered silver nanocones for refractive index plasmonic nanosensors.

Silver nanocones with tunable plasmon resonances and high refractive index (RI) sensitivity have attracted much attention. Herein, through systematic measuring of the RI sensitivities of silver nanocones with different geometric parameters, the size and shape effects are investigated. The results show that RI sensitivities increase as silver nanocones become longer and the widths of their heads become smaller. Through engineering of the outline symmetry, the silver nanocones exhibit RI sensitivity as high as 910 nm/RIU (RI unit) and the figure of merit arrives at 3.8.