Effect of Edge Rounding on the Extinction Properties of Hollow Metal Nanoparticles

The optical responses of metal nanoparticles induced by subtle variations in geometry, especially by the rounding of the edges and corners, have generated great interest at present due to the requirement of fabricating refined structures of metal nanoparticles and theoretical simulations of the real particles. We study the effect of both inner and outer edge rounding on the optical properties of gold nanobox and gold nanobox dimer with small interparticle distances by using the discrete dipole approximation method. The shift of extinction peaks, the electric field distribution, and the variation of refractive index sensitivities by changing the curvature of the inner and outer edges of gold nanobox are investigated. We demonstrate that the optical properties of nanobox are more sensitive to the outer edge rounding than the inner edge rounding. By edge rounding of two very close gold nanoboxes, the blue shift of the dipolar and the quadrupolar plasmonic resonances of nanobox dimer are shown. Comparing with the inner edge rounding of nanobox dimer, we find that rounding of the outer edges causes the larger shift of the quadrupolar mode and approximate shift of the dipole mode.