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Published April 12, 2017 | Published
Journal Article Open

Optomechanics of Single Aluminum Nanodisks

Abstract

Aluminum nanostructures support tunable surface plasmon resonances and have become an alternative to gold nanoparticles. 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 photoexcited 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.

Copyright and License

© 2017 American Chemical Society.

Acknowledgement

P.N., N.J.H., and S.L. thank the Robert A. Welch Foundation (Grants C-1220 to N.J.H., C-1222 to P.N., and C-1664 to S.L.), the Army (MURI W911NF-12-1-0407), and the Air Force (MURI FA9550-15-1-0022) for financial support. S.L. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (ECCS-1608917). D.C. and J.E.S. acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council grants scheme and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science. We thank Professor Greg Hartland for stimulating discussions.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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Created:
October 11, 2023
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October 11, 2023