Fabrication and optical properties of assembled gold nanoparticles monolayer on elastomeric substrate

We report an easy, scalable and low cost interfacial self-assembly approach to fabricate dense metal nanoparticle monolayer films deposited on elastomeric substrate which exhibit tunable plasmonic responses to uniaxial mechanical stretching. The nanoparticle monolayers deposited on silicon substrate by water-in-oil self-assembling were quantitatively transferred to the elastic substrate by a wet lift-up soft lithography approach. By uniaxial stretching of the resulting nanoparticle film the plasmonic resonance peak experience a blue shift proportional to the applied strain. Numerical simulations were performed on the plasmon modes of the gold nanoparticles film under mechanical stress to explain the observed behaviors. Such metal nanoparticle film can be exploited in a wide range of applications in nanophotonics including strain sensors.