Manifestation of the anisotropic properties of the molecular J-aggregate shell in optical spectra of plexcitonic nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that anisotropic properties of molecular J-aggregate shells significantly influence the optical spectra of plexcitonic nanoparticles, revealing new ways to control their optical behavior through material selection.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework accounting for shell anisotropy in plexcitonic nanostructures, extending previous isotropic models and aligning with experimental data.

Findings

Anisotropy drastically affects optical spectra.

Shell material influences anisotropic properties.

Proposed nanostructure for experimental observation.

Abstract

The theoretical studies of light absorption and scattering spectra of the plexcitonic two-layer triangular nanoprisms and three-layer nanospheres are reported. The optical properties of such metal-organic core--shell and core--double-shell nanostructures were previously explained within the framework of pure isotropic models for describing their outer excitonic shell. In this work, we show that the anisotropy of the excitonic shell permittivity can drastically affect the optical spectra of such hybrid nanostructures. This fact is confirmed by directly comparing our theory with some available experimental data, which cannot be treated using conventional isotropic shell models. We have analyzed the influence of the shell anisotropy on the optical spectra and proposed a type of hybrid nanostructure that seems most convenient for experimental observation of the effects associated with the anisotropy of the excitonic shell. A strong dependence of the anisotropic properties of the J-aggregate shell on the material of the intermediate spacer layer is demonstrated. This allows proposing a new way to effectively control the optical properties of metal-organic nanostructures by selecting the spacer material. Our results extend the understanding of physical effects in optics of plexcitonic nanostructures to more complex systems with the anisotropic and multi-excitonic properties of their molecular aggregate shell.