Modified Drude model for small gold nanoparticles surface plasmon resonance based on the role of classical confinement

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modified Drude model incorporating classical confinement effects to accurately describe the surface plasmon resonance of small gold nanoparticles, validated by experimental extinction data.

Contribution

A novel semi-classical Drude-like model that accounts for size-dependent restoration force and damping corrections, improving the understanding of plasmonic behavior in small gold nanoparticles.

Findings

Restoration force increases as nanoparticle diameter decreases.

Model shows good agreement with experimental extinction data.

Imaginary permittivity is highly sensitive to nanoparticle size.

Abstract

We study the effect of restoration force caused by the limited size of a small metallic nanoparticle (MNP) on its linear response to the electric field of incident light. In a semi-classical phenomenological Drude-like model for small MNP, we consider restoration force caused by the displacement of conduction electrons with respect to the ionic background taking into account a free coefficient as a function of diameter of NP in the force term obtained by the idealistic Thomson model in order to adjust the classical approach. All important mechanisms of the energy dissipation such as electron-electron, electron-phonon and electron-NP surface scatterings and radiation are included in the model. In addition a correction term added to the damping factor of mentioned mechanisms in order to rectify the deficiencies of theoretical approaches. To determine the free parameters, the experimental data of extinction cross section of gold NPs with different sizes doped in the glass are used and a good agreement between experimental data and our model is observed. It is shown that by decreasing the diameter of NP, the restoration force becomes larger and classical confinement effect becomes more dominant in the interaction. According to experimental data, the best fitted parameter for the coefficient of restoration force is a third order negative powers function of diameter. The fitted function for the correction damping factor is proportional to the inverse squared wavelength and third order power series of NP diameter. The real and imaginary parts of permittivity for different sizes of gold NPs are presented and it is seen that the imaginary part is more sensitive to the diameter variations. Increase in the NP diameter causes increase in the real part of permittivity and decrease in the imaginary part.