Morphology control and localized surface plasmon resonance in glancing angle deposited films

This research investigates an extension of the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique and a biosensing application of films produced by GLAD. The extension to GLAD, called phi-sweep (PS), improves column isolation compared to films grown by traditional GLAD (TG) as well as modifies the column tilt angle, beta, of the slanted columns according to tan(beta PS) = tan(betaTG)cos(gamma), where gamma is the sweep angle. The biosensing application makes use of localized surface plasmon resonance in noble metal GLAD films functionalized with rabbit immunoglobulin G (rIgG) to detect binding of anti-rabbit immunoglobulin G (anti-rIgG) to the films' surface. The extinction peak red-shifts a distance dependent on the concentration of anti-rIgG solution in a manner described by the Langmuir isotherm with a saturation value, Deltalambda max, of 29.4 +/- 0.7 nm and a surface confined thermodynamic binding constant, Ka, of (2.7 +/- 0.3)x10 6 M-1.