Atwater and coworkers, recently showed that when a metal nanoparticle residing near a bulk conducting surface is illuminated with light near but slight off its plasmon resonance wavelength, the particle will either lose or gain electrons to or from the bulk conductor so as to shift its plasmon resonance wavelength to be in better accord with that of the illuminating light. This comes about on account of the fact that on-resonance the entropy change accompanying the light absorption process is increased, primarily as a result of temperature increases brought about through non-radiative processes returning the nanoparticle to its ground plasmonic state. We have fabricated a series of metal-particle /thin semiconductor film/ metal-film devices that show that for a well-engineered device even the low intensities a sample encounters during the measurement of a routine UV-Visible spectrum is able to alter the nanoparticles’ electron charge density thereby measurably shifting the location of the system’s plasmonic absorption.

Shifting the plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles with incident light intensities as low as those encountered in ordinary UV-visible spectroscopy

2019 Spring National Meeting

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