Quantifying the optical extinction cross section of a plasmonic nanoparticle has recently emerged as a powerful means to characterize the nanoparticle morphologically, i.e., to determine its size and shape with a precision comparable to electron microscopy while using a simple optical microscope. In this context, a critical piece of information to solve the inverse problem, namely, calculating the particle geometry from the measured cross section, is the material permittivity. For bulk gold, many datasets have been reported in the literature, raising the question of which one is more adequate to describe specific systems at the nanoscale. Another question is how the nanoparticle interface, not present in the bulk material, affects its permittivity. In this work, we have investigated the role of the material permittivities on the morphometric characterization of defect-free ultra-uniform gold nanospheres with diameters of 10 nm and 30 nm, following a quantitative analysis of the polarization- and spectrally-resolved extinction cross section on hundreds of individual nanoparticles. The measured cross sections were fitted using an ellipsoid model. By minimizing the fit error or the variation of the fitted dimensions with color channel selection, the material permittivity dataset and the surface damping parameter g best describing the nanoparticles are found to be the single crystal dataset by Olmon et al. [Phys. Rev. B 86, 235147 (2012)] and g ≈ 1, respectively. The resulting nanoparticle geometries are in good agreement with transmission electron microscopy of the same sample batches, including both 2D projection and tomography.
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28 January 2021
Research Article|
January 26 2021
Quantitative morphometric analysis of single gold nanoparticles by optical extinction microscopy: Material permittivity and surface damping effects
Special Collection:
Spectroscopy and Microscopy of Plasmonic Systems
Lukas M. Payne
;
Lukas M. Payne
1
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University
, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, United Kingdom
2
School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University
, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, United Kingdom
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Francesco Masia
;
Francesco Masia
1
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University
, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, United Kingdom
2
School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University
, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, United Kingdom
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Attilio Zilli
;
Attilio Zilli
1
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University
, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, United Kingdom
3
Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano
, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy
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Wiebke Albrecht
;
Wiebke Albrecht
4
EMAT and NANOlab Center of Excellence, University of Antwerp
, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerp, Belgium
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Paola Borri
;
Paola Borri
1
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University
, Museum Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3AX, United Kingdom
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Wolfgang Langbein
Wolfgang Langbein
a)
2
School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University
, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, United Kingdom
a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: langbeinww@cardiff.ac.uk
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a)Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: langbeinww@cardiff.ac.uk
Note: This paper is part of the JCP Special Topic on Spectroscopy and Microscopy of Plasmonic Systems.
J. Chem. Phys. 154, 044702 (2021)
Article history
Received:
September 26 2020
Accepted:
December 18 2020
Citation
Lukas M. Payne, Francesco Masia, Attilio Zilli, Wiebke Albrecht, Paola Borri, Wolfgang Langbein; Quantitative morphometric analysis of single gold nanoparticles by optical extinction microscopy: Material permittivity and surface damping effects. J. Chem. Phys. 28 January 2021; 154 (4): 044702. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0031012
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