Plasmonic Nanoparticles Embedded in Nanomembrane Microcavity for Flexible Optical Tuning

• Published in: Advanced optical materials Vol. 10; no. 21
• Main Authors: Pang, Chi, Li, Rang, Dong, Haiyun, Saggau, Christian N., Kern, Felix L., Potapov, Pavel, Schultz, Johannes, Lubk, Axel, Hübner, René, Kentsch, Ulrich, Zhou, Shengqiang, Helm, Manfred, Chen, Feng, Ma, Libo, Schmidt, Oliver G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Weinheim Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-11-2022
• Subjects: Blue shift; Fluence; Holes; Ion implantation; Materials science; Microcavities; microtube cavity; nanomembrane; Nanoparticles; Optics; plasmonic nanoparticles; Plasmonics; Red shift; Refractivity; resonant mode tuning; Silver
• ISSN: 2195-1071; 2195-1071
• DOI: 10.1002/adom.202200765

The combination of plasmonic nanoparticles and optical microcavities has attracted broad interest for both fundamental and applied studies. However, the conventional scheme of plasmonic nanoparticles being located at microcavity outer surfaces suffers from serious problems such as significant radiative/scattering losses and chemical/mechanical instabilities. Here, silver nanoparticles (NPs) and dispersed ions embedded in nanomembrane‐formed whispering‐gallery‐mode (WGM) microtube cavities are prepared by ion implantations as compact and stable optoplasmonic microcavities. Upon low ion fluence implantation, dispersed silver ions are generated in the tube cavity wall, leading to a redshift of the WGM resonant cavity modes due to the increased refractive index. The silver ions start to aggregate into plasmonic NPs in the cavity wall when increasing implantation ion fluences. The competition and transition between redshift induced by the refractive index increase and blueshift induced by the formation of plasmonic NPs are investigated. Moreover, quality factor enhancement of the WGM modes is observed owing to the improved light confinement caused by the presence of NPs. This work demonstrates a convenient approach for the fabrication of stable optoplasmonic microcavities and fine tuning of resonant modes, indicating wide applications such as wavelength selective tuning and enhanced light–matter interactions.
Transition from silver ions to nanoparticles embedded in microtube cavities leads to the competition between red‐ and blue‐shift of resonant modes together with improved optical confinement. Relying on the coupling of localized surface plasmon resonances and whispering‐gallery‐modes, the silver nanoparticles enabled optical tuning can be switched on/off depending on the excitation wavelength match/mismatch.