Chemical Physics Letters, Vol.702, 102-105, 2018
Strain induced plasmon tuning in planar square-shaped aluminum nanoparticles array
Metal nanoparticle aggregate is an exciting platform for manipulating light-matter interactions at the nanoscale, thanks to the optically driven free electrons couple electrically across the inter-particle gap region. We use time dependent density functional theory calculations to investigate the optical response modulations in planar square-shaped aluminum nanoparticles array via morphology deformation (varying the inter-particle gap distance in the range of 2-20 angstrom) separately along one and two directions. We report the surprising observation that irrespective of the different morphology deformations, there exists a unique inter-particle gap distance of 12 angstrom for which, a maximum optical field enhancement can be achieved. We remark that plasmonic interaction between metal nanoparticles in an aggregate is controlled to a large extent by the size of the inter-particle gap distance. We believe that our quantum mechanical calculations will inspire and contribute to the design, control, and exploitation of aluminum based plasmonic devices. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.