Localized surface plasmons in face to face dimer silver triangular prism nanoparticles

Using the discrete dipole approximation method, all plasmonic bands in 80nm silver face to face dimer triangular prism nanoparticles were reported. The characteristics of plasmonics peaks were investigated with variations of dimer gap and refractive index of the surrounding medium of dimer. We found that there are three and four plasmonic bands, respectively, for dimer separation 2 and 4 nm. The extinction spectra and electric field distribution showed that the dipole-dipole interaction creates strong plasmonic band, but the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction relates to weak plasmonic band. The results revealed that the strong plasmonic bands have high sensitivity factors with respect to weak plasmonic bands. This study may be used in the synthesis of asymmetric dimers made of metal nanoparticles with new plasmonics properties. Published by AIP Publishing.