Giant mid-IR resonant coupling to molecular vibrations in sub-nm gaps of plasmonic multilayer metafilms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel plasmonic multilayer system with sub-nanometer gaps that supports tunable mid-infrared resonances, enabling giant enhancement of spectroscopic signals and strong light-matter coupling in disordered structures.

Contribution

It introduces a self-assembled, short-range-ordered gold nanoparticle multilayer platform supporting tunable collective resonances with exceptional enhancement and robustness, simplifying fabrication compared to traditional superlattices.

Findings

Achieved tunable mid-IR resonances beyond 11 μm

Observed SEIRA enhancement factors of approximately 10^6

Demonstrated robust collective plasmon-polariton modes

Abstract

Nanomaterials capable of confining light are desirable for enhancing spectroscopies such as Raman scattering, infrared absorption, and nonlinear optical processes. Plasmonic superlattices have shown the ability to host collective resonances in the mid-infrared, but require stringent fabrication processes to create well-ordered structures. Here, we demonstrate how short-range-ordered Au nanoparticle multilayers on a mirror, self-assembled by a sub-nm molecular spacer, support collective plasmon-polariton resonances in the visible and infrared, continuously tunable beyond 11 $\mu$m by simply varying the nanoparticle size and number of layers. The resulting molecule-plasmon system approaches vibrational strong coupling, and displays giant Fano dip strengths, SEIRA enhancement factors ~10$^6$, light-matter coupling strengths g~100 cm$^{-1}$, Purcell factors ~10$^6$, and mode volume compression factors ~10$^8$. The collective plasmon-polariton mode is highly robust to nanoparticle vacancy disorder and is sustained by the consistent gap size defined by the molecular spacer. Structural disorder efficiently couples light into the gaps between the multilayers and mirror, enabling Raman and infrared sensing of sub-picolitre sample volumes.