TY - JOUR A1 - Nooke, Alida A1 - Beck, Uwe A1 - Hertwig, Andreas A1 - Krause, Andreas A1 - Krüger, Hannes A1 - Lohse, Volkmar A1 - Negendank, Detlef A1 - Steinbach, J. T1 - Ellipsometric detection of gases with the surface plasmon resonance effect on gold top-coated with sensitive layers JF - Thin solid films N2 - An ellipsometric gas sensor based on the surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of ~ 43 nm thick gold layers was investigated. To protect the gold layer from contamination and to improve the detection limits, the gold layers were top-coated with 5–6 nm thick layers of organic a-C:H or with inorganic metal oxides TiO2 or ZrO2. The additional layers increased the long-term stability, whereas the metal oxide layers protect better than a-C:H. Furthermore, the additional layers decreased the detection limits by one order of magnitude in case of a-C:H and two orders of magnitude in case of the oxides. It could be shown that the detection limits also depend on the kind of preparation (sol–gel process or physical vapour deposition) of the additional layers. KW - Gas sensor KW - SPR KW - Ellipsometry KW - Sensitive layer KW - TiO2 KW - ZrO2 KW - a-C:H PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsf.2010.11.091 SN - 0040-6090 VL - 519 IS - 9 SP - 2659 EP - 2663 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-23353 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -