The Effect of Planar Defects on the Optical Properties of Silver Nanostructures

Abstract

We present a computational, atomistic electrodynamics investigation of the effects of planar defects on the optical properties of silver nanocubes, where the planar defects we considered are different surface orientations, twins, partial dislocations, and full dislocations. We find that for nanocubes smaller than about 3 nm, the optical response is very sensitive to the specific surface structure resulting from the defects. However, the sensitivity, as measured by shifts in the plasmon resonance wavelength, is strongly reduced at larger sizes because of the decreasing importance of surface effects even when the majority of the atomic deformation due to the crystal defects is contained within the interior of the nanocube. Overall, this study suggests that the effects of individual crystalline defects on the optical properties of nanostructures can be safely ignored for nanostructure sizes larger than about 5 nm.