Core and shell sizing of small silver-coated nanospheres by optical extinction spectroscopy

Silver metal nanoparticles (Nps) are extensively used in different areas of research and technology due to their interesting optical, thermal and electric properties, especially for bare core and core-shell nanostructures with sizes smaller than 10 nm. Since these properties are core-shell size-dependent, size measurement is important in manipulating their potential functionalization and applications. Bare and coated small silver Nps fabricated by physical and chemical methods present specific characteristics in their extinction spectra that are potentially useful for sizing purposes. This work presents a novel procedure to size mean core radius smaller than 10 nm and mean shell thickness of silver core-shell Nps based on a comparative study of the characteristics in their optical extinction spectra in different media as a function of core radii, shell thickness and coating refractive index. From the regularities derived from these relationships, it can be concluded that plasmon full width at half-maximum (FWHM) is sensitive to core size but not to coating thickness, while plasmon resonance wavelength (PRW) is related to shell thickness and mostly independent of core radius. These facts, which allow sizing simultaneously both mean core radius and shell thickness, can also be used to size bare silver Nps as a special case of core-shell Nps with zero shell thickness. The proposed method was applied to size experimental samples and the results show good agreement with conventional TEM microscopy.