T. Abdallah

Multimodal plasmon coupling in low symmetry gold nanoparticle pairs detected in surface-enhanced Raman scattering

We report on surface-enhanced Raman scattering of silicon phonon vibrations from arrays of gold nanoprism pairs fabricated by electron beam lithography. We found that resonant excitation of the quadrupolar surface plasmon mode of the nanoprisms increases Raman scattering intensity from the substrate as the distance between the nanoparticle pairs decreases. Finite element modeling and plasmon coupling theory indicate that symmetry is reduced as the nanoparticles approach, resulting in increased dipole-quadrupole coupling. Plasmonic enhancement of the incident and Raman-scattered photons results from the dipolar component of the mixed plasmonic field. This effect is expected to be largest in assemblies/aggregates of nanoparticles.

Photoacoustic measurements of excitons in cdse nanorods

Photoacoustic (PA) spectra were obtained for CdSe nanorods (NRs) of different aspect ratios, prepared via the organometallic synthesis. The second derivative spectra were used to have an accurate determination of the different excitonic transitions. Using the lowest transition energy (band gap) 1S(e)-1S1/2(h) and applying the effective mass model, the NRs diameters were determined. The obtained diameters were then compared to direct measurements of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and XRD. It is observed that the band gap depends on the diameter of the rods due to quantum confinement effect, since diameters are of the order of the bulk CdSe Bohr radius. The second derivative of the PA spectra for CdSe NRs also shows clearly a second excitonic transition1P(e)-1P1/2(h) in contrast to UV-Vis absorption spectra carried out for colloidal samples. The thermal parameters for samples were also measured and compared to the bulk values.