Giant enhancement of photocurrents in plasmonic structures (plasmon drag effect) provides opportunities for compact electric monitoring of plasmonic effects, and thus is promising for plasmonic-based sensing applications. In the experiment, we measure photoinduced electric signals in flat and profile-modulated systems, and test their sensitivity to small changes of the local dielectric environment, such as a presence of Langmuir–Blodgett monolayers at the metal surface. We show that the addition of a stearic acid monolayer leading to a small shift in plasmon resonance conditions can be ultimately resolved with electrical measurements as the switching in the photovoltage polarity.

等离子体结构中光电流的极大增强（等离子体阻力效应）为等离子体效应的紧凑电监控提供了机会，因此有望用于基于等离子体的传感应用。在实验中，我们测量了平面和轮廓调制系统中的光感应电信号，并测试了它们对局部电介质环境（例如在金属表面上存在Langmuir-Blodgett单层）的微小变化的敏感性。我们表明，添加硬脂酸单层导致等离激元共振条件发生微小变化，最终可以通过电学测量解决光电压极性的切换问题。