Designed Nanoparticle-Mesoporous Multilayer Nanocomposites as Tunable Plasmonic-Photonic Architectures for Electromagnetic Field Enhancement

R. MARTÍNEZ GAZONI; M. G. BELLINO; M. C. FUERTES; G. GIMÉNEZ; G. J. A. A. SOLER-ILLIA; M. L. MARTINEZ-RICCI

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2017 vol. 5 p. 3445 - 3455

1932-7447

In this work we present the designed production of a highly tunable nanocomposite able to confine andenhance the electromagnetic field through the combined effects of photonic and plasmonic responses.Silver nanoparticles (NPs) were embedded within a Mesoporous Photonic Crystal (MPC) composed of amesoporous multilayer presenting a TiO2?SiO2unit cell. This nanosystem was synthesized by a combi-nation of reproducible sol?gel thin film techniques with the selective production of NPs within thetitania layers. The design of the MPC architecture was tuned so that each photonic band gap edgewould match the plasmonic absorption peak of the Ag NP, in order to combine their confined plasmonicenhancement with that of the band gap edges due to the multilayer structure. We find that the MPCcontributes to enhancing the Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) signal of probe moleculestrapped in the mesopores. This effect indicates the relevance of the unit cell interfaces for the localelectromagnetic field enhancements, and opens the gate to performing plasmon-assisted SERS sensing.The resulting material results in a promising platform to study the interplay between photonic andplasmonic systems. These tuneable nano-architectures are highly robust, reproducible, and can leadto applications in sensing platforms, as well as in optoelectronics, enhanced photocatalysis, or artificialphotosynthesis.