Aluminum nanostructures support tunable surface plasmon resonances and have become an alternative to gold nanopartides. Whereas gold is the most-studied plasmonic material, aluminum has the advantage of high earth abundance and hence low cost. In addition to understanding the size and shape tunability of the plasmon resonance, the fundamental relaxation processes in aluminum nanostructures after photoexcitation must be understood to take full advantage of applications such as photocatalysis and photodetection. In this work, we investigate the relaxation following ultrafast pulsed excitation and the launching of acoustic vibrations in individual aluminum nanodisks, using single-particle transient extinction spectroscopy. We find that the transient extinction signal can be assigned to a thermal relaxation of the photo excited electrons and phonons. The ultrafast heating-induced launching of in-plane acoustic vibrations reveals moderate binding to the glass substrate and is affected by the native aluminum oxide layer. Finally, we compare the behavior of aluminum nanodisks to that of similarly prepared and sized gold nanodisks.
- Optomechanics of Single Aluminum Nanodisks
- Man-Nung Su - Rice UniversityPratiksha D. Dongare - Rice UniversityDebadi Chakraborty - University of MelbourneYue Zhang - Rice UniversityChongyue Yi - Rice UniversityFangfang Wen - Rice UniversityWei-Shun Chang - Rice UniversityPeter Nordlander - Rice UniversityJohn E. Sader - University of MelbourneNaomi J. Halas - Rice UniversityStephan Link - Rice University
- Nano letters, Vol.17(4), pp.2575-2583
- Amer Chemical Soc
- 9
- English
- MURI W911NF-12-1-0407 / Army ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science; Australian Research Council C-1220; C-1222; C-1664 / Robert A. Welch Foundation; The Welch Foundation Australian Research Council MURI FA9550-15-1-0022 / Air Force 1608917 / Div Of Electrical, Commun & Cyber Sys; National Science Foundation (NSF); NSF - Directorate for Engineering (ENG) ECCS-1608917 / National Science Foundation; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Journal article
- 9914419470801301