Unified treatment for photoluminescence and scattering of coupled metallic multi-nanostructures

Abstract

We present a multimer coupling classic harmonic oscillator model to reveal the scattering and photoluminescence (PL) properties of metallic nanoparticle chains. Taking particle number from 1 to 6 as examples, we compare the calculated spectra with the experimental ones from other researchers’ work, and they agree well with each other. Furthermore, scattering and PL properties are analyzed carefully varying with particle number n, coupling strength g, and effective free electron number N. Results indicates larger red-shift and smaller full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the scattering spectra with larger n or/and larger g. Particularly, the limitation of the red-shift is obtained in the limit of n→∞. Meanwhile, the splitting of PL modes increases as g increases, and the amplitudes are dependent on the excitation wavelength. This classic model is simple and shows a unified treatment for understanding the scattering and PL properties of multimer coupled systems.

Keywords

• Unified treatment
• Photoluminescence
• Scattering
• Coupled metallic multi-nanostructure