On the optical properties of plasmonic glasses

Paper in proceeding, 2014

We report on the optical properties of plasmonic glasses which are metal-dielectric composites composed of metallic inclusions in a host dielectric medium. The investigated structures are of quasi-random nature, described by the pair correlation function, featuring a minimum center-to-center distance between metallic inclusions and long range randomness. Plasmonic glasses exhibiting short-range order only may be fabricated using bottom-up, self-assembly methods and have been utilized in a number of applications such as plasmonic sensing or plasmon-enhanced solar harvesting, and may be also employed for certain non-linear applications. It is therefore important to quantify their properties. Using theoretical methods we investigate optical of 1D, 2D, and 3D structures composed of amorphous distributions of metallic spheres. It is shown, that the response of the constituent element, i.e. The single sphere localized surface plasmon resonance, is modified by the scattered fields of the other spheres in such a way that its peak position, peak amplitude, and full-width at half-maximum exhibit damped oscillations. The oscillation amplitude is set by the particle density and for the peak position may vary by up to 0.3 eV in the optical regime. Using a modified coupled dipole approach we calculate the effective (average) polarizability of plasmonic glasses and discuss their spectra as a function of the dimensionality, angle of incidence and polarization, and the minimum center-to-center distance. The analytical model is complemented and validated by T-Matrix calculations of the optical cross-sections of amorphous arrays of metallic spheres obtained using a modification of the Random Sequential Adsorption algorithm for lines, surfaces, and volumes.