High-performance nanosensors based on plasmonic Fano-like interference: probing refractive index with individual nanorice and nanobelts.

We propose two different configurations for which the Fano-like interference of longitudinal plasmon resonances occurring at individual metallic nanoparticles can be easily employed in refractive index sensing: a colloidal suspension of nanospheroids (nanorice) and a single nanowire with rectangular cross section (nanobelt) on top of a dielectric substrate. We numerically study the performance of the two in terms of their figures of merit, which are calculated under realistic conditions. For the case of nanorice, we explicitly incorporate the effect of size dispersity into the simulations. Our obtained results show that the application of the proposed configurations seems to be not only feasible but also very promising.