Spectral dependence of nonlinear absorption in ordered silver metallic nanoprism arrays

Héctor Sánchez-Esquivel,Raúl Rangel-Rojo,Giovanni Mattei,Jorge Alejandro Reyes-Esqueda,Karen Y. Raygoza-Sánchez,Boris Kalinic,Emanuele Gemo,Niccolò Michieli,Tiziana Cesca

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04814-2

Abstract

Ordered metallic nanoprism arrays have been proposed as novel and versatile systems for the observation of nonlinear effects such as nonlinear absorption. The study of the effect of the local field reinforcement on the fast optical third order nonlinear response around the Surface Plasmon Resonance is of great interest for many plasmonic applications. In this work, silver nanoprism arrays have been synthesized by the nanosphere lithography method. A low repetition rate tunable picosecond laser source was used to study the irradiance and wavelength dependence of the nonlinear absorption properties around the dipolar and quadrupolar resonances of the nanoarray with the use of the z-scan technique. The irradiance dependence of the on-resonance nonlinearity was studied, and a spectral region where nonlinear absorption is negligible was identified. This is important for the possible application of these materials in optical information processing devices.

Highlights

The promise of novel materials with a-la-carte optical properties has placed nanostructures in the focus of intense research activity for applications such as all-optical switching, biomedics and solar-energy[1,2,3,4]
The optical response of plasmonic nanostructures depends on several variables such as the size, shape, composition of the nanoparticles, the dielectric contrast with the host medium and the coupling effects amongst the nanostructures, which is in turn dependent on their arrangement[20,21,22]
We focused our efforts on two different aspects of the nonlinear response of metallic nanoprism arrays (MNPAs)

Summary

Introduction

The promise of novel materials with a-la-carte optical properties has placed nanostructures in the focus of intense research activity for applications such as all-optical switching, biomedics and solar-energy[1,2,3,4]. A study of the dependence of the NLA of MNPAs as a function of the input irradiance and the peak absorption wavelength is presented. Finite elements method (FEM) simulations of the local-electric field in the investigated nanoprism arrays have been performed at both the dipolar and quadrupolar resonance wavelengths.

Results

Conclusion