Plasmonic glasses: Optical properties of amorphous metal-dielectric composites

Abstract

Plasmonic glasses composed of metallic inclusions in a host dielectric medium are investigated for their optical properties. Such structures characterized by short-range order can be easily fabricated using bottom-up, self-organization methods and may be utilized in a number of applications, thus, quantification of their properties is important. We show, using T-Matrix calculations of 1D, 2D, and 3D plasmonic glasses, that their plasmon resonance position oscillates as a function of the particle spacing yielding blue- and redshifts up to 0.3 eV in the visible range with respect to the single particle surface plasmon. Their properties are discussed in light of an analytical model of an average particle's polarizability that originates from a coupled dipole methodology.