Optical properties of local surface plasmon resonance in Ag/ITO sliced nanosphere by the discrete dipole approximation

Abstract

Optical properties of localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) of Ag/ITO sliced nanosphere have been studied using discrete dipole approximation and plasmon hybridization theory. It is found that different morphologies of sliced nanosphere can induce distinctive features in the extinction spectra. In the meanwhile, gap distances and refractive index of the surrounding medium could modulate the plasmon hybridization and the LSPR shifting. At large separation, the shift of LSPR peaks for the nanosphere sliced in halves consisting of ITO and Ag is small and insensitive to the gap distance in the weak coupling, whereas smaller separation exhibits a distinct red shift. Additionally, multiple resonance peaks are excited for the nanosphere sliced in quarters consisting of ITO and Ag. In this situation, electric field is mainly distributed in the gap region of sliced nanosphere and the central point. These results indicate that different morphologies of sliced nanosphere could create abundant tunable LSPR modes, which provides potential for multiplex optical sensing.