Study on the Plasmonic Properties of Ag-Coated Spherical Dielectric Nanoparticles by Finite-Difference Time-Domain Calculations

The optical properties of nanostructures are rather important for designing plasmonic devices. In this work, the plasmonic properties of Ag-coated spherical dielectric nanoparticles (NPs), namely, Ag-SiO2-NPs, Ag-ZnO-NPs, and Ag-TiO2-NPs, were studied using a method of finite-difference time-domain calculations. It was found that the Ag-coated dielectric NPs start to exhibit unique plasmonic properties different from Ag-NPs as the thickness of Ag shells is reduced to be less than a critical value, which is basically determined by the penetration depth of light in silver. On the other hand, the core-shell structures of Ag-coated dielectric NPs were found to be of benefit to the plasmonic resonance high-efficiently coupled with the incident light. In the extinction spectra of Ag-coated dielectric NPs with sufficient thin Ag shells, the dipole plasmonic resonance is predominant and exhibits a pronounced red-shift up to infrared band with increasing the NP sizes. In addition to the electromagnetic waves of emission towards the outside, the electromagnetic field in the dielectric NP inside is uniformly enhanced as well and both of dipole and quadrupole plasmonic resonances are identified. The Ag-coated dielectric NPs are suggested to have great potential in the plasmonic devices working in infrared band, such as the light emitters and SERS substrates for biosensing.