Fabrication and characterization of gold nanocrown arrays on a gold film for a high-sensitivity surface plasmon resonance biosensor

• Gold nanocrown arrays are produced by nanoimprint lithography and tilted evaporation.
• Use of gold nanocrown arrays can improve the sensor sensitivity significantly.
• Improved sensitivity is due to enhanced field–matter interaction at gold nanocrowns.

We report on a versatile method to fabricate gold nanocrown arrays on a thin gold film based on ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography and tilted evaporation technique. We realize highly ordered 2-dimensional nanocrown arrays and characterize their sizes and morphologies using scanning electron microscopy. To demonstrate an enhanced surface plasmon resonance (SPR) detection by the fabricated gold nanocrown samples, biosensing experiments are performed by measuring SPR angle shift for biotin–streptavidin interaction and bulk refractive index change of dielectric medium. We hope that the suggested plasmonic platform with a high sensitivity could be extended to a variety of biomolecular binding reactions.