Plasmon assisted light propagation and Raman scattering hot-spot in end-to-end coupled silver nanowire pairs

Herein, we report on the experimental observation of light propagation and localization capabilities of end-to-end connected silver nanowire (Ag NW) pairs. By exciting the surface plasmon polaritons at one end of Ag NW pair, we observed relatively intense light emission at the junction and weak light emission at the distal end of the pair. To probe the localization of light at nanowire junction, we captured far-field Raman image of an isolated Ag NW pair adsorbed with rhodamine 6G and observed enhanced Raman scattering at the nanowire junction. Such nanophotonic modules with light propagation and localization capabilities can be harnessed for multiplexed on-chip plasmonics. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3679649]