New materials for tunable plasmonic colloidal nanocrystals

We present a review on the emerging materials for novel plasmonic colloidal nanocrystals. We start by explaining the basic processes involved in surface plasmon resonances in nanoparticles and then discuss the classes of nanocrystals that to date are particularly promising for tunable plasmonics: non-stoichiometric copper chalcogenides, extrinsically doped metal oxides, oxygen-deficient metal oxides and conductive metal oxides. We additionally introduce other emerging types of plasmonic nanocrystals and finally we give an outlook on nanocrystals of materials that could potentially display interesting plasmonic properties.