Localized surface plasmon resonance properties of symmetry-broken Au–ITO–Ag multilayered nanoshells

Abstract

The plasmonic properties of symmetry-broken Au–ITO–Ag multilayered nanoshells by shell cutting are studied by the finite element method. The influence of the polarization of incident light and geometrical parameters on the plasmon resonances of the multilayered nanoshells are investigated. The polarization-dependent multiple plasmon resonances appear from the multilayered nanoshells due to symmetry breaking. In nanostructures with a broken symmetry, the localized surface plasmon resonance modes are enhanced resulting in higher order resonances. According to the plasmon hybridization theory, these resonance modes and greater spectral tunability derive from the interactions of an admixture of both primitive and multipolar modes between the inner Au core and outer Ag shell. By changing the radius of the Au core, the extinction resonance modes of the multilayered nanoshells can be easily tuned to the near-infrared region. To elucidate the symmetry-broken effects of multilayered nanoshells, we link the geometrical asymmetry to the asymmetrical distributions of surface charges and demonstrate dipolar and higher order plasmon modes with large associated field enhancements at the edge of the Ag rim. The spectral tunability of the multiple resonance modes from visible to near-infrared is investigated and the unique properties are attractive to applications including angularly selective filtering to biosensing.