Abstract

Monitoring the levels of combustion gases such as H₂, CO and NO_x from high temperature (500°C and higher) combustion environments requires materials with high thermal stability and resilience and can withstand harsh oxidizing and reducing environments. Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) have shown potential in plasmonic gas sensing due to their catalytic activity, high oxidation stability, and plasmonics sensitivity to changes in its surrounding environment. Encapsulation of the AuNPs in a variety of metal oxides enables both sensitivity and selectivity within multivariable sensing array studies. Au nanorods (AuNRs) embedded in metal oxides allows for a significant variation in the plasmonic wavelength region that is able to be probed as well as enabling both dipole and multipole plasmon modes to be exploited for sensing applications. Integration challenges will be highlighted and utilization of thermal energy harvesting methods enables the demonstration of spectrometer free detection of combustion gases.

© 2017 Optical Society of America