Silver Nanowires As A Functional Thin Film

This thesis is to characterize a plasmonic film suitable for use on an optical fibre. This body of work focuses on the study of a thermal and fluorescent enhancing plasmonic film. This film was used on an optical fibre containing a tilted fibre Bragg’s grating to allow in situ monitoring of temperature, and the coupling of light into the film for both heat generation (thermoplasmonics) and to stimulate fluorescence on the surface (with fluorescent enhancement). This has involved examining the effect of the population, and the presence of a spacer layer. Calculations of the fluorescent enhancement as well as the heating efficiency were carried out. This film was identified as strongly scattering light that was in the cladding out of the fibre, as well as acting as a high efficiency heat source (100 ± 20 %.) which allowed for the determination of the melting temperature of the silver nanowires.