Tuning plasmon excitations in pure and transition metal-doped arrays of noble metal nanochains

TL;DR

This study investigates how the plasmonic properties of noble-metal nanochains are affected by the number of coupled chains and transition-metal doping, revealing tunable optical responses with potential technological applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates that transition-metal doping can enhance and tune plasmon modes in nanochains, challenging previous beliefs about attenuation in TM-doped systems.

Findings

Plasmon peaks shift from sub-eV to visible range with more chains.

Doping broadens absorption bands and creates additional plasmon peaks.

TM atoms can induce plasmon modes even in pure TM nanochains.

Abstract

We study the plasmonic properties of coupled noble-metal nanochains in the case of different number of coupled chains and doping by different transition-metal (TM) atoms within the time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) approach. We find that as the number of chains in the array increases the plasmon peak shifts from the sub-eV towards the visible range. As doping with TM atoms increases, the visible absorption band broadens, owing to formation of additional plasmon peaks. The optical response is very sensitive to the type of doped atoms, their number and position; in particular, the additional peaks are most pronounced in the case of weak doping when they correspond to local plasmon oscillations around the impurity atom. These effects have a potential to be used in various modern technologies, from sensors to solar cells. Most of the studies of nano-plasmon effects have been focused on alkali- and noble-metal systems with extended s-electron states, while it was believed that doping with TM atoms with their more localized charge as a rule leads to an attenuation of the plasmon modes. We demonstrate that TM atoms can play a constructive role in plasmon generation in small chain systems, and that plasmonic modes can emerge even in some pure TM nanochains.