Hydrogen Treatment of Surface Layer of a Gold Film on Glass

This work is devoted to the effect of pulse hydrogen saturation on a gold film on glass used as a surface plasmon resonance sensor of the "Plasmon-6" spectrophotometer.Due to electrolysis in a 10 % solution of H2SO4 in water, the film was saturated with hydrogen.The surface of the gold film was the cathode, and the carbon electrode was the anode.Electrolysis current pulses lasted 2 s when the time interval between pulses was 1800 s.In this way, several samples were processed.The consequences of the action of five, ten, fifteen and twenty pulses on a gold film were examined as the experimentally obtained spectral curves for treated samples.The surface plasmon resonance is sensitive to changes occurring in the surface layer of the surface plasmon resonance sensor.It is applicable to control and analyze the changes induced by the proposed hydrogen treatment.In the experiments, the plasmon resonance curves shifted to larger angles.Therefore the optical properties modifications of the surface layer of the gold film were recorded.The observed changes gradually increased with the increase of the number of pulses of the electrolysis current.The mathematical approach to light reflection from the gold film was performed to analyze changes in the surface layer of the gold film.The dielectric properties of the surface layer of the gold film were estimated using the effective medium model.It made it possible to simulate changes in the surface layer of the film induced by hydrogen treatment.As a result, theoretical curves of plasmon resonance were obtained.A qualitative correlation between the experimentally observed changes and the theoretical ideas about the processes occurring during hydrogen treatment in the surface layer of the gold film on glass was achieved.