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Self-orienting nanocubes for the assembly of plasmonic nanojunctions

Nature Nanotechnology volume 7, pages 433–437 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Plasmonic hot spots are formed when metal surfaces with high curvature are separated by nanoscale gaps and an electromagnetic field is localized within the gaps. These hot spots are responsible for phenomena such as subwavelength focusing1,2, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy3 and electromagnetic transparency4, and depend on the geometry of the nanojunctions between the metal surfaces5. Direct-write techniques such as electron-beam lithography can create complex nanostructures with impressive spatial control6 but struggle to fabricate gaps on the order of a few nanometres or manufacture arrays of nanojunctions in a scalable manner. Self-assembly methods, in contrast, can be carried out on a massively parallel scale using metal nanoparticle building blocks of specific shape7,8. Here, we show that polymer-grafted metal nanocubes can be self-assembled into arrays of one-dimensional strings that have well-defined interparticle orientations and tunable electromagnetic properties. The nanocubes are assembled within a polymer thin film and we observe unique superstructures derived from edge–edge or face–face interactions between the nanocubes. The assembly process is strongly dependent on parameters such as polymer chain length, rigidity or grafting density, and can be predicted by free energy calculations.

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Figure 1: Self-oriented nanocrystals for plasmonic materials.
Figure 2: Theoretically predicted interaction between silver nanocubes.
Figure 3: Chain-length-dependent orientation of nanocube junctions.
Figure 4: Plasmonic response of the oriented nanojunctions.

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Acknowledgements

A.R.T. acknowledges financial support from UCSD start-up funds, a NSF BRIGE grant (ECCS-1125789) and a Hellman Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NanoEngineering Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0448, California, USA

    Bo Gao, Gaurav Arya & Andrea R. Tao

Authors
  1. Bo Gao
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  2. Gaurav Arya
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  3. Andrea R. Tao
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Contributions

B.G. and A.R.T. conceived and designed the assembly experiments. B.G. performed the assembly experiments. G.A. designed and performed Monte Carlo calculations. A.R.T. performed finite element method simulations. G.A. and A.R.T. co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Andrea R. Tao.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Gao, B., Arya, G. & Tao, A. Self-orienting nanocubes for the assembly of plasmonic nanojunctions. Nature Nanotech 7, 433–437 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.83

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