Modeling of the surface plasmon resonance tunability of silver/gold core–shell nanostructures

the modulation of the surface plasmon resonance wavelength as a function of the ambient refractive index is one of the important criteria to be understood clearly. Among various noble metals, gold and silver nanoparticles have the strongest surface enhancement factors for the Raman signal and their tunability for many practical applications has been experimentally demonstrated. We present a comprehensive numerical investigation by means of a finite element analysis on Ag/Au core-shell nanospheres including agglomerated and non-agglomerated dimers. Tunability as a function of shell thickness, total nanosphere radius and fraction of overlap between the dimer is discussed. Our studies show that tunability is considerably affected by the nanosphere radius rather than the shell thickness. These findings may be helpful in the synthesis of nanoplasmonic structures, especially related to an optimized use of gold as the shell material for the targeted application.