Nanosphere-in-a-nanoegg: damping the high-order modes induced by symmetry breaking

We study the optical properties of the nanosphere-in-a-nanoegg structure (NSNE) by the three-dimensional finite difference time domain method. We demonstrate the suppression of the high-order plasmon modes in NSNE, which is induced by the plasmon interaction between the inner nanosphere and the outer nanoegg shell. A two-layer plasmon hybridization model is presented to explain this mechanism. The results we showed for plasmon mode suppression would be important to the design of the metal plasmonic devices. In addition, due to high tunable plasmon resonances in the near-infrared region (700 to 1,300 nm) with sub-100-nm size, NSNE can serve as a good substitute for the Au-silica-Au multilayer nanoshells in biological applications. Furthermore, compared with the Au-silica-Au nanoshells, NSNE has the advantage that the strong field enhancement can be achieved at the outer surface of the Au shell.