Reducing the loss of electric field enhancement for plasmonic core–shell nanoparticle dimers by high refractive index dielectric coating

Plasmonic nanoparticle (NP) dimers, generating highly intense areas of electric field enhancement named hot spots, have been playing a vital role in various applications like surface enhanced Raman scattering. For stabilization and functionalization, such metallic NPs are often coated with dielectric shells, yet suffer from a rapid degeneration of the hot spot with the increase of the shell thickness. Herein, it is demonstrated that the use of appropriately high refractive dielectric coatings can greatly reduce the loss of local electric field enhancement, maintaining usable hot spots. Two mechianisms work synergistically. Firstly, the high refractive index dielectric coating enables a great leap of the local electric fields reaching the gap, which follows the boundary conditions at the interface within electrodynamics. Secondly, owing to its strong Mie resonances that can participate in the plasmon hybridization, the high refractive index dielectric coating contributes to a strong light coupling effect in terms of improving the light absorption. Taking advantage of the proposed physical process decomposition, both the resonance shift and local electric field enhancement can be elaborated. These findings should be of significant importance in extended applications of surface enhanced spectroscopies and related plasmonic devices based on hot spots. (paper)