Surface plasmon resonance characterization of thermally evaporated thin gold films

The heterogeneous character of thin gold films prepared by thermal evaporation and the dependence of this heterogeneity on the rate of their deposition must be considered when exploiting their optical properties for biosensor purposes. For instance, the performance of thin gold films for surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensors may drastically be degraded if care is not taken to prepare a film with a high fraction of gold (>95%). We use three different models to interpret the SPR response of gold films prepared by thermal evaporation. We show that the interpretation of the SPR curves requires considering both a global heterogeneity of the gold films and a surface roughness. Our conclusions are further corroborated by scanning surface plasmon microscope (SSPM) images of these thin gold films.