If plasmonics were a person it would have an h-index of 112, with 88,000 citations (57,000 without self-citation) and 33,000 citing articles. With a publication record starting around 2002, this is very impressive indeed. In this paper in Nanoscale, Associate Professor Wounjhang Park presents two different plasmonic oligomer structures and discusses their optical properties.
While I must admit that the deeper physical meaning is lost on me, I can appreciate the thoroughly conducted investigation of the two inherently different six-fold symmetric structures. By ordering six gold nano-rods around a central gold island, Tamma and co-workers can measure and describe the coupled plasmon resonances of these plasmonic molecules. The high symmetry allow for a detailed analysis using group theory.
From the viewpoint of a tinctorial chemist it is always interesting to read this type of paper and try to bridge the difference between the language and properties of metallic nanostructures and small dye molecules. The matter-light interaction is in both cases an interaction between light and electrons, but how far can the analogy be stretched? Can plasmonic excitation be fully described by a transition dipole and could coupled plasmonic resonance be described in exciton coupling terminology?
Interested? Much more can be gleaned from the paper:
Nanorod orientation dependence of tunable Fano resonance in plasmonic nanorod heptamers
Venkata Ananth Tamma, Yonghao Cui, Jianhong Zhou and Wounjhang Park
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR33292B
by Thomas Just Sørensen
