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Tailoring and imaging the plasmonic local density of states in crystalline nanoprisms

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 426–432 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Surface plasmon (SP) technologies exploit the spectral and spatial properties of collective electronic oscillations in noble metals placed in an incident optical field. Yet the SP local density of states (LDOS), which rule the energy transducing phenomena between the SP and the electromagnetic field, is much less exploited. Here, we use two-photon luminescence (TPL) microscopy to reveal the SP-LDOS in thin single-crystalline triangular gold nanoprisms produced by a quantitative one-pot synthesis at room temperature. Variations of the polarization and the wavelength of the incident light redistribute the TPL intensity into two-dimensional plasmonic resonator patterns that are faithfully reproduced by theoretical simulations. We demonstrate that experimental TPL maps can be considered as the convolution of the SP-LDOS with the diffraction-limited Gaussian light beam. Finally, the SP modal distribution is tuned by the spatial coupling of nanoprisms, thus allowing a new modal design of plasmonic information processing devices.

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Figure 1: Crystalline Au nanoprisms and TPL microscopy.
Figure 2: Polarization control of TPL maps.
Figure 3: Influence of incident wavelength.
Figure 4: TPL signal and SP-LDOS.
Figure 5: SP-LDOS engineering in coupled crystalline nanoprisms.
Figure 6: Plasmonic modal logic gates in coupled nanoprisms.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC; contract number ERC–2007-StG Nr 203872 COMOSYEL), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR; grant ANR-09- BLAN-0049-01 Plastips), the CPER ‘Gaston Dupouy’ 2007–2013 and the massively parallel computing centre CALMIP in Toulouse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEMES CNRS UPR 8011 and Université de Toulouse, 29 rue Jeanne Marvig, BP 94347, 31055 Toulouse cedex 4, France

    Sviatlana Viarbitskaya, Alexandre Teulle, Renaud Marty, Jadab Sharma, Christian Girard, Arnaud Arbouet & Erik Dujardin

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  1. Sviatlana Viarbitskaya
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  2. Alexandre Teulle
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Contributions

E.D., A.A. and C.G. designed the research. J.S. and E.D. developed the new synthesis of nanoprisms and J.S. produced the samples. S.V., A.T. and E.D. prepared the TPL samples and performed the SEM and AFM imaging. A.A. and R.M. developed the optical set-up. S.V., A.A., A.T. and R.M. performed the TPL experiments. C.G. conceived the theoretical framework and implemented the simulation codes with R.M. and A.T. Simulations were performed by C.G., R.M. and A.T. All authors contributed to the data analysis, figure preparation and manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Arnaud Arbouet or Erik Dujardin.

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Viarbitskaya, S., Teulle, A., Marty, R. et al. Tailoring and imaging the plasmonic local density of states in crystalline nanoprisms. Nature Mater 12, 426–432 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3581

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