Plasmonic nanoclusters with rotational symmetry: polarization-invariant far-field response vs changing near-field distribution

Plasmon resonance of gold and silver nanoparticle arrays in the Kretschmann (attenuated total reflectance) vs. direct incidence configuration

While the behaviour of plasmonic solid thin films in the Kretschmann (also known as Attenuated Total Reflection, ATR) configuration is well-understood, the use of discrete nanoparticle arrays in this optical configuration is not thoroughly explored. It is important to do so, since close packed plasmonic nanoparticle arrays exhibit exceptionally strong light-matter interactions by plasmonic coupling. The present work elucidates the optical properties of plasmonic Au and Ag nanoparticle arrays in both the direct normal incidence and Kretschmann configuration by numerical models, that are validated experimentally. First, hexagonal close packed Au and Ag nanoparticle films/arrays are obtained by air–liquid interfacial assembly. The numerical models for the rigorous solution of the Maxwell’s equations are validated using experimental optical spectra of these films before systematically investigating various parameters. The individual far-field/near-field optical properties, as well as the plasmon relaxation mechanism of the nanoparticles, vary strongly as the packing density of the array increases. In the Kretschmann configuration, the evanescent fields arising from p- and s-polarized (or TM and TE polarized) incidence have different directional components. The local evanescent field intensity and direction depends on the polarization, angle of incidence and the wavelength of incidence. These factors in the Kretschmann configuration give rise to interesting far-field as well as near-field optical properties. Overall, it is shown that plasmonic nanoparticle arrays in the Kretschmann configuration facilitate strong broadband absorptance without transmission losses, and strong near-field enhancement. The results reported herein elucidate the optical properties of self-assembled nanoparticle films, pinpointing the ideal conditions under which the normal and the Kretschmann configuration can be exploited in multiple light-driven applications.

Rapid simulations of hyperspectral near-field images of three-dimensional heterogeneous surfaces

The scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscope (s-SNOM) has emerged as a powerful tool for resolving nanoscale inhomogeneities in laterally heterogeneous samples. However, most analytical models used to predict the scattering near-field signals are assuming homogenous landscapes (bulk materials), resulting in inconsistencies when applied to samples with more complex configurations. In this work, we combine the point-dipole model (PDM) to the finite-element method (FEM) to account for the lateral and vertical heterogeneities while keeping the computation time manageable. Full images, spectra, or hyperspectral line profiles can be simulated by calculating the self-consistent dipole radiation demodulated at higher harmonics of the tip oscillation, mimicking real experimental procedures. Using this formalism, we clarify several important yet puzzling experimental observations in near-field images on samples with rich typography and complex material compositions, heterostructures of two-dimensional material flakes, and plasmonic antennas. The developed method serves as a basis for future investigations of nano-systems with nontrivial topography.

Angle-dependent optical response of the plasmonic nanoparticle clusters with rotational symmetry

Plasmonic nanoparticle clusters are widely considered experimentally and numerically. In the clusters consisting of one central particle and N satellite particles, not only the magnetic modes but also the toroidal modes can exist. Here, the eigenmodes of such clusters and the corresponding excitation efficiency under the illumination of a plane wave are studied analytically by using the eigen-decomposition method. The angular dependence of the optical response of these clusters is clearly demonstrated. The behavior of excitation efficiency is dependent on both the value and the parity of N, the number of satellite particles. Our results may provide a guide for the selective excitation of plasmonic modes in the plasmonic nanoparticle clusters.

Strengthening Fano resonance on gold nanoplates with gold nanospheres

Plasmonic Fano resonance has attracted extensive attention due to its many applications, including plasmonic sensing, electromagnetically induced transparency, light trapping and stopping, due to its narrow linewidth and asymmetric spectral shape. However, many metal nanostructures are designed with complex geometries to generate Fano resonance and few of them can support a deep Fano dip. Herein we report on the strengthening of the Fano resonance on silicon-supported Au nanoplates through the formation of (Au nanosphere)-(Au nanoplate) heterodimers. The deposition of the Au nanosphere on the top can greatly strengthen the substrate-induced Fano resonance of the Au nanoplate with a deep dip. We also observe that the replacement of the Au nanosphere with a Au nanocube can suppress the excitation of the Fano resonance in the heterodimer. When the sharp corners and edges of the nanocubes gradually become rounded, the Fano resonance appears again with increasing asymmetry. Both the dip depth and wavelength of the Fano resonance can be independently tailored by varying the nanosphere diameter and the nanoplate thickness, respectively. We believe that our results provide an attractive and facile platform for modulating Fano dips and constructing Fano resonance-based devices.

Signatures of Small Morphological Anisotropies in the Plasmonic and Vibrational Responses of Individual Nano-objects

The plasmonic and vibrational properties of single gold nanodisks patterned on a sapphire substrate are investigated via spatial modulation and pump-probe optical spectroscopies. The features of the measured extinction spectra and time-resolved signals are highly sensitive to minute deviations of the nanodisk morphology from a perfectly cylindrical one. An elliptical nanodisk section, as compared to a circular one, lifts the degeneracy of the two nanodisk in-plane dipolar surface plasmon resonances, which can be selectively excited by controlling the polarization of the incident light. This splitting effect, whose amplitude increases with nanodisk ellipticity, correlates with the detection of additional vibrational modes in the context of time-resolved spectroscopy. Analysis of the measurements is performed through the combination of optical and acoustic numerical models. This allows us first to estimate the dimensions of the investigated nanodisks from their plasmonic response and then to compare the measured and computed frequencies of their detectable vibrational modes, which are found to be in excellent agreement. This study demonstrates that single-particle optical spectroscopies are able to provide access to fine morphological characteristics, representing in this case a valuable alternative to traditional techniques aimed at postfabrication inspection of subwavelength nanodevice morphology.

Photo-induced charge density distribution in metal surfaces and its extraction with apertureless near-field optics

Electromagnetic (EM) waves impinging on finite metallic structures can induce non-uniform electrical currents and create oscillating charge densities. These local charges govern the important physical processes such as plasmonic behavior or enhanced Raman scattering. Yet the quantitative calculation and probing of the spatial distribution of the charge density still remain challenging at the subwavelength scale. This is especially the case if one considers the boundary effect, where the charge density can become divergent and conventional finite element methods fail to obtain accurate information. With an approach we recently developed, we calculate this charge density for subwavelength structures with and without sharp corners: gold disks and equilateral triangles. We also devise an independent way to extract the surface charge density distributions from experiments using scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscope (s-SNOM). We found that the charge density [Formula: see text] is related to the near field signal S _n by [Formula: see text] With no adjustable parameters, the extracted surface charge distribution from the experiments matches well with that from the theoretical prediction, both in magnitude and phase. Our work provides a quantitative study of the surface charge distributions and a systematic and rigorous treatment to extract surface charge distributions at the nanoscale, opening opportunities for mining the near-field data from s-SNOM.

Modern Scattering-Type Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscopy for Advanced Material Research

Infrared and optical spectroscopy represents one of the most informative methods in advanced materials research. As an important branch of modern optical techniques that has blossomed in the past decade, scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) promises deterministic characterization of optical properties over a broad spectral range at the nanoscale. It allows ultrabroadband optical (0.5-3000 µm) nanoimaging, and nanospectroscopy with fine spatial (<10 nm), spectral (<1 cm^-1 ), and temporal (<10 fs) resolution. The history of s-SNOM is briefly introduced and recent advances which broaden the horizons of this technique in novel material research are summarized. In particular, this includes the pioneering efforts to study the nanoscale electrodynamic properties of plasmonic metamaterials, strongly correlated quantum materials, and polaritonic systems at room or cryogenic temperatures. Technical details, theoretical modeling, and new experimental methods are also discussed extensively, aiming to identify clear technology trends and unsolved challenges in this exciting field of research.

Engineering the optical properties of dielectric nanospheres by resonant modes

Recent progress in nanoscale optical physics is associated with the development of a new branch of nanophotonics exploring strong Mie resonances in dielectric nanoparticles with high refractive index (HRI). The high-index resonant dielectric nanostructures form building blocks for novel photonic meta-devices with low losses and advanced functionalities. In this work, we investigate the size effect of an HRI cuprous oxide (Cu₂O) nanosphere on the optical properties of the structure, such as, scattering and absorption spectrum. We also experimentally demonstrate that the scattering field can be significantly engineered by tuning the radius of Cu₂O. It is found that the resonant eigenmodes supported by the nanospheres play the dominant role in the absorption and scattering characteristic of the structure. From the perspective of eigenmodes, we can immediately find the right structure parameters to realize strong absorption (scattering) at either single wavelength or broadband wavelength. Furthermore, the multipole expansion method has been applied to explore the physical nature (i.e. electric mode or magnetic mode) of the eigenmode as well as contributions from different modes.

Two-Dimensional Infrared Spectroscopy with Local Plasmonic Fields of a Trimer Gap-Antenna Array

Half-wavelength plasmonic antennas tuned to resonance with molecular vibrational excitations have been demonstrated to enhance 2DIR signals by multiple orders of magnitude. We design doubly degenerate in-plane plasmonic normal modes of the symmetric trimer gap-antenna, which have orthogonal dipole moments excited by light of the appropriate polarization, to localize the enhanced field into the antenna's gap. Vibrational excitations serve as sensitive probes of the plasmonic fields. 2DIR spectroscopy of thin molecular films indicates that molecules emitting enhanced signals experience an electric field with a direction independent of the excitation laser pulse polarization. Our results illustrate the trade-off between the large signal amplification in molecules close to the antenna surface by resonant plasmons, where the direction of the enhanced fields follows metal surface boundary conditions, and the associated limitations for the polarization-selective spectroscopy. The ultrafast quantum dynamics reported by the enhanced signals is not affected by its interaction with plasmonic excitation.

Tuning Plasmon Resonance in Magnetoplasmonic Nanochains by Controlling Polarization and Interparticle Distance for Simple Preparation of Optical Filters

Magnetoplasmonic Fe₃O₄-coated Ag nanoparticles (NPs) are assembled in large scale (18 × 18 mm²) in order to observe unique modulation of plasmonic coupling and optical tunable application via both external magnetic field and the combination of magnetic dipole and electrostatic interactions of particle-particle and particle-substrate. These large nanochains film exhibits outstanding tunability of plasmonic resonance from visible to near-infrared range by controlling the polarization angle and interparticle distance (IPD). The enormous spectral shift mainly originated from far-field rather than near-field coupling of Ag cores because of the sufficiently large separation between them in which Fe₃O₄ shell acts as spacer. This tunable magnetoplasmonic film can be applicable in the field of anisotropic optical waveguides, tunable optical filter, and nanoscale sensing platform.

Polarisation-independent enhanced scattering by tailoring asymmetric plasmonic systems

Polarised light provides an efficient way for dynamic control over local optical properties of nanoscale plasmonic structures. Yet many applications that utilise control over the plasmonic near-field would benefit if the plasmonic device maintained the same magnitude of optical response for all polarisations. Here we show that completely asymmetric nanostructures can be designed to exhibit a broadband polarisation-independent and enhanced optical response. We provide both analytical and experimental results on two sets of plasmonic trimer nanostructures consisting of unequal nanodisks/apertures with different gap spacing. We show that, at certain inter-particle separations, enhanced far-field cross sections are independent to the incident polarisation, while still demonstrating nontrivial near-field control.

Polarization-Independent Multiple Fano Resonances in Plasmonic Nonamers for Multimode-Matching Enhanced Multiband Second-Harmonic Generation

Plasmonic oligomers composed of metallic nanoparticles are one class of the most promising platforms for generating Fano resonances with unprecedented optical properties for enhancing various linear and nonlinear optical processes. For efficient generation of second-harmonic emissions at multiple wavelength bands, it is critical to design a plasmonic oligomer concurrently having multiple Fano resonances spectrally matching the fundamental excitation wavelengths and multiple plasmon resonance modes coinciding with the harmonic wavelengths. Thus far, the realization of such a plasmonic oligomer remains a challenge. This study demonstrates both theoretically and experimentally that a plasmonic nonamer consisting of a gold nanocross surrounded by eight nanorods simultaneously sustains multiple polarization-independent Fano resonances in the near-infrared region and several higher-order plasmon resonances in the visible spectrum. Due to coherent amplification of the nonlinear excitation sources by the Fano resonances and efficient scattering-enhanced outcoupling by the higher-order modes, the second-harmonic emission of the nonamer is significantly increased at multiple spectral bands, and their spectral positions and radiation patterns can be flexibly manipulated by easily tuning the length of the surrounding nanorods in the nonamer. These results provide us with important implications for realizing ultrafast multichannel nonlinear optoelectronic devices.

Achromatic flat optical components via compensation between structure and material dispersions

Chromatism causes great quality degradation of the imaging system, especially for diffraction imaging. The most commonly method to overcome chromatism is refractive/diffractive hybrid optical system which, however, sacrifices the light weight and integration property of diffraction elements. A method through compensation between the structure dispersion and material dispersion is proposed to overcome the chromatism in flat integrated optical components. This method is demonstrated by making use of silver nano-slits waveguides to supply structure dispersion of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) in metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide to compensate the material dispersion of metal. A broadband deflector and lens are designed to prove the achromatic property of this method. The method demonstrated here may serve as a solution of broadband light manipulation in flat integrated optical systems.

Single protein sensing with asymmetric plasmonic hexamer via Fano resonance enhanced two-photon luminescence

Fano resonances in plasmonic systems have been proved to facilitate various sensing applications in the nanoscale. In this work, we propose an experimental scheme to realize a single protein sensing by utilizing its two-photon luminescence enhanced by a plasmonic Fano resonance system. The asymmetric gold hexamer supporting polarization-dependent Fano resonances and plasmonic modes without in-plane rotational symmetry is used as a referenced spatial coordinate for bio-sensing. We demonstrate via the full-vectorial three-dimensional simulation that the moving direction and the spatial location of a protein can be detected via its two-photon luminescence, which benefits from the resonant near-field interaction with the electromagnetic hot-spots. The sensitivity to changes in position of our method is substantially better compared with the conventional linear sensing approach. Our strategy would facilitate the sensing, tracking and imaging of a single biomolecule in deep sub-wavelength scale and with a small optical extinction cross-section.

Electric and magnetic hotspots in dielectric nanowire dimers

We study the formation of the electric and magnetic near-field hotspots in dielectric cylindrical dimers. We compare dielectric and metallic dimers by using experimental data for all materials and consider both TM and TE polarizations of light. We demonstrate that dielectric dimers allow us to simultaneously achieve pure magnetic and electric near-field hotspots for both polarizations in contrast to plasmonic structures. This offers new approaches for near-field engineering such as sensing, control of spontaneous emission, and enhanced Raman scattering.

Boosting Fano resonances in single layered concentric core-shell particles

Efficient excitation of Fano resonances in plasmonic systems usually requires complex nano-structure geometries and some degree of symmetry breaking. However, a single-layered concentric core-shell particle presents inherent Fano profiles in the scattering spectra when sphere and cavity modes spectrally overlap. Weak hybridization and suitable choice of core and shell materials gives rise to strong electric dipolar Fano resonances in these systems and retardation effects can result in resonances of higher multipolar order or of magnetic type. Furthermore, suitable tailoring of illumination conditions leads to an enhancement of the Fano resonance by quenching of unwanted electromagnetic modes. Overall, it is shown that single layered core-shell particles can act as robust Fano resonators.

High-efficiency second harmonic generation from a single hybrid ZnO nanowire/Au plasmonic nano-oligomer

We introduce a plasmonic-semiconductor hybrid nanosystem, consisting of a ZnO nanowire coupled to a gold pentamer oligomer by crossing the hot-spot. It is demonstrated that the hybrid system exhibits a second harmonic (SH) conversion efficiency of ∼3 × 10(-5)%, which is among the highest values for a nanoscale object at optical frequencies reported so far. The SH intensity was found to be ∼1700 times larger than that from the same nanowire excited outside the hot-spot. Placing high nonlinear susceptibility materials precisely in plasmonic confined-field regions to enhance SH generation opens new perspectives for highly efficient light frequency up-conversion on the nanoscale.

Controlling near-field polarization distribution of a plasmonic prolate nanospheroid by its aspect ratio and polarization of the incident electromagnetic field

Near-field polarization distribution of a plasmonic prolate nanospheroid in an incident electromagnetic field versus its polarization and the spheroid's aspect ratio is studied in detail. Polarization of the near-field is described with the help of the 3D generalized Stokes parameters, allowing simple visualization. It is shown that this distribution has a complex structure, which drastically depends on the incident field polarization and parameters of the plasmon resonance of the nanoparticle. Received analytical solutions cover the whole set of particles with shape varying from spherical to the nanoneedles and nanorods by changing the aspect ratio of the spheroid. An experiment for visualization of the vectorial near-field around a plasmonic nanoparticle is proposed.

Observation of Fano resonances in all-dielectric nanoparticle oligomers

It is well-known that oligomers made of metallic nanoparticles are able to support sharp Fano resonances originating from the interference of two plasmonic resonant modes with different spectral width. While such plasmonic oligomers suffer from high dissipative losses, a new route for achieving Fano resonances in nanoparticle oligomers has opened up after the recent experimental observations of electric and magnetic resonances in low-loss dielectric nanoparticles. Here, light scattering by all-dielectric oligomers composed of silicon nanoparticles is studied experimentally for the first time. Pronounced Fano resonances are observed for a variety of lithographically-fabricated heptamer nanostructures consisting of a central particle of varying size, encircled by six nanoparticles of constant size. Based on a full collective mode analysis, the origin of the observed Fano resonances is revealed as a result of interference of the optically-induced magnetic dipole mode of the central particle with the collective mode of the nanoparticle structure. This allows for effective tuning of the Fano resonance to a desired spectral position by a controlled size variation of the central particle. Such optically-induced magnetic Fano resonances in all-dielectric oligomers offer new opportunities for sensing and nonlinear applications.

Plasmonic Fano resonances in metallic nanorod complexes

Plasmonic Fano resonances (FRs) in nanostructures have been extensively studied in recent years. Nanorod-based complexes for FRs have also attracted much attention. The basic optical properties and fabrication technology of different kinds of plasmonic nanorods have been greatly developed over the last several years. The mutipole plasmon resonances and their flexible adjustment ranges on nanorods make them promising for FR modifications and structure diversity. In this paper, we review some recently studied plasmonic nanorod based nanostructures for FRs, including single nanorods, dimers, mutipole rods and nanorod-nanoparticle hybrids. The corresponding applications of the FRs are also briefly discussed.