Optical behavior of silver nanoparticles embedded in polymer thin film layers

Abstract

The study of metal nanoparticles (NPs) is challenging for the control of the light matter interaction phenomena. In this context, our work is focused on optical characterization and modeling of polymer thin films layers with inclusions of previously chemically synthesized NPs. Through the presence of metallic NPs in polymer thin films, the optical properties are assumed to become tunable. Thin film layers with inclusions of differently shaped and sized silver NPs, such as nanospheres and nanoprisms, are optically characterized to get the scattering, the reflection and the absorption of the layers. One step and two step seed based methods of silver ions reduction are used for the chemical synthesis of nanospheres and nanoprisms. The plasmonic resonance peaks of these colloidal solutions range from 360 to 1300 nm. A poly vinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) polymer matrix is chosen for its light non-absorbing and NP-stabilizing properties. Knowledge on the shape and size of the NPs embedded in the spin coated layers is obtained by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging. The optical properties include spectrophotometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) measurements to get the reflectance, the transmittance, the absorptance and the optical indices n and k of the heterogeneous layers. A redshift in absorption is measured between deposited nanospheres and other shaped NPs. FDTD simulations allow calculation of far and near field properties. The visualization of the NP interactions and the electric field enhancement, on and around the NPs, are studied to improve the understanding of the far field properties.