Preparation and optical properties of silica Ag-Cu alloy core-shell composite colloids

The silica Ag-Cu alloy core-shell composite colloids have been successfully synthesized by an electroless plating approach to explore the possibility of modifying the plasmon resonance at the nanoshell surface by varying the metal nanoshell composition for the first time. The surface plasmon resonance of the composite colloids increases in intensity and shifts towards longer, then shorter wavelengths as the Cu/Ag ratio in the alloy shell is increased. The variations in intensity of the surface plasmon resonance with the Cu/Ag ratio obviously affect the Raman bands of the silica colloid core. The report here may supply a new technique to effectively modify the surface plasmon resonance. - Graphical abstract: The silica Ag-Cu alloy core-shell colloids have been successfully synthesized to explore the possibility of modifying the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) by varying the metal nanoshell composition for the first time. Varying the Cu/Ag ratio of the alloy nanoshell has obvious influences on the SPR of the composite colloids and the Raman bands of the amorphous silica core