Effects of layer eccentricity on the super-resonant states of active cylindrical core-shell nano-particles

Abstract

This work reports on the effects of layer eccentricity on the resonant properties of active cylindrical core-shell nano-particles excited by a near-by exterior magnetic line source. The core-shell particles consist of a silver core layered with a silica shell. For a fixed over-all radius of the nano-particle equal to 30 nm, we investigate designs with relatively small (radius equal to 6 nm) and large (radius equal to 24 nm) silver cores and we quantify their performance characteristics in terms of the near- and far-field properties. Our results show that the super-resonances, known to exist in the concentric version of these nano-particles, are significantly influenced by introducing eccentricity (through displacements of the silver core relative to the silica shell). In particular, their amplitude responses are found to diminish significantly for silver core displacements ≥ 3 nm for the small core case, and even for displacements ≥ 1 nm for the large core case. The present results are useful from the experimental point of view since slight displacements of the centers of the core and shell parts of the investigated nano-particles are likely to occur in standard fabrication processes.

Keywords

• Plasmonics
• Nano-particles
• Scattering
• Gain
• Eccentricity