Optical response of dielectric&metal-core/metal-shell nanoparticles: Near electromagnetic field and resonance frequencies

Abstract

We study the diffraction of a monochromatic electromagnetic plane wave by a dielectric&metal-core/metal-shell nanoparticle surrounded by a dielectric medium. This problem was solved by using generalized Mie’s theory and both the scattering cross section and the square module of the electric field were calculated as a function of shell thickness. Numerically, the first particles studied were gold-core/silver-shell nanoparticles and their inverse configuration. The gold-core/silver-shell particle presented more variation of their optical properties. The second particles were vacuum-core/metal-shell surrounded by vacuum, symmetric configurations. In this case, the dispersive Drude dielectric function for the metal was used, and a comparative study between the positions of the resonance frequencies obtained from quasi-static limit and electrodynamic theory was performed. Thus, consequently the formula obtained from the quasi-static limit can be used to calculate the positions of the resonance frequencies instead of the electrodynamic theory, when the external radius is smaller than 20 nm.