title: Plasmonic focusing in rod-sheath heteronanostructures.
abstract: This paper describes the fabrication of plasmonic focusing, free-standing rod-sheath hetero-nanostructures based on electrochemical templated synthesis and selective chemical etching. These hetero-nanostructures take advantage of plasmon interference together with field enhancements due to sharp junction structures to function as stand-alone SERS substrates containing Raman hot spots at the interface of the rod and sheath segments. This result is investigated with empirical and theoretical (discrete dipole approximation, DDA) methods, and we show how plasmon interference can be tuned by varying the sheath and rod lengths.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: Shuzhou
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Banholzer
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Schatz
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208.
authors.forename: Chad A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Mirkin