Optical properties of the nanocomposite materials based on plasmon nanoparticles

Abstract

In this work, the optical properties of nanocomposite materials based on plasmonic spherical metallic nanoparticles have been studied. The authors have compared four different effective theories that take into account the size dispersion, interaction between nanoparticles, and extrinsic size effect for the calculation of the effective refractive index of Au, Ag, and Cu nanoparticles in polymer. It has been demonstrated that size distribution induces an inhomogeneous broadening and a change in the amplitude of the plasmon band. The lowest shift of resonance characteristics has been observed for copper based nanocomposite for all the effective theories. It has been shown that the same nanocomposite material, but with other parameters (size and concentration of inclusions), can be described by different effective theories.