Faraday rotation enhancement for colloidal spherical Au and Ag nanoparticles and their mixtures

Abstract

So far, magnetooptical (MO) properties of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have been studied only by magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectroscopy at the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) band. However, direct knowledge of the Faraday rotation effect (FR) is very important in fundamental research and applications. In the present work, we study an enhancement of FR of individual gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and AgNPs and their mixture of colloidal aqueous suspension. The Au and Ag spherical NPs were synthesized independently as colloids in an aqueous suspension and then such mixtures were studied (AgNPs were also studied as a suspension in hexane). The noble metal NPs were characterized by TEM, UV–Vis, and refraction methods. The enhancement of FR of individual NPs was observed and it is consistent with available MCD results. For the mixtures, observed changes of magnitude of FR is small, and coupling of both SPR is rather weak. The obtained FR spectra associated with SPR band have been successfully converted to MCD spectra using the Kramers-Kronig transformation. Calculated MCD spectra are consisted with that obtained by direct measurements.